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PRINCETON  ■  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of  the 
Rev.  John  B.  Wiedinger 


BV  2063  .M282 

Maclean,  Norman,  1869-1952. 
Can  the  world  be  won  for 
Christ? 


CAN  THE   WORLD   BE 
WON    FOR    CHRIST? 


CAN  THE  WORLD   BE 
WON    FOR    CHRIST? 


BY 

NORMAN    MACLEAN 


HODDER    AND    STOUGHTON 
NEW  YORK   AND   LONDON 


TO 

THE     CONGREGATION 

WORSHIPPING   IN   THE 

PARISH   CHURCH 

OF 

COLINTON 

WHOSE  ZEAL  IN  BEHALF  OF 

MISSIONS 

HAS  BEEN   AN   EXAMPLE  TO   MANY 


T 


PREFACE 

HIS  book  had  its  origin  in  a  series  of 
articles  which  the  writer  contributed  to 
the  Scotsman  on  the  Reports  of  the  Com- 
missions of  the  World  Missionary  Conference. 
These  articles,  revised  and  enlarged,  are  now 
embodied  in  Chapters  I.,  III.,  IV.,  V.,  VI.,  and 
VII. ;  the  other  six  chapters  are  wholly  new. 

The  matters  discussed  in  this  book  will  be 
found  set  forth  with  all  fulness  of  detail  in 
the  eight  volumes  of  the  Reports  of  the  Com- 
missions. These  Reports  are  the  most  valuable 
documents  available  for  the  scientific  study  of 
the  missionary  enterprise.  Only  the  general 
underlying  principles  are  here  discussed,  and 
for  the  opinions  which  he  formed  from  the 
study  of  the  materials,  and  for  the  form  in 
which  these  opinions  are  expressed,  the  writer 
is  alone  responsible. 


viii  PREFACE 

The  desire  of  the  writer  is  that  through  this 
book  there  may  come  to  others  something  of 
that  inspiration  which  came  to  those  who 
attended  the  World  Missionary  Conference — 
a  gathering  which  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
rightly  designated  as  "an  assembly  without 
parallel  in  the  history  of  this  or  any  other 
land." 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Stupendous  Task  .  .  .  .1 

Insufficiency  of  present  effort — Changed  attitude 
of  Missions — Greatness  of  the  field — Africa — 
Power  of  Islam — Malay  Archipelago  —  India — 
Unoccupied  fields— Over  120,000,000  outside  the 
reach  of  Christianity — Church  must  fall  back  on 
God. 

II 

Can  Christianity  Justify  its  Claim?         .  .19 

Claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  final  religion — Three 
great  arguments  for  its  claim  :  It  embraces  (1) 
Perfect  ideal  of  man  ;  (2)  Perfect  ideal  of  God  ; 
(3)  Makes  these  ideals  operative  in  the  lives  of 
men — They  who  see  the  Vision  must  follow  it  to 
the  farthest  ends  of  the  earth. 


Ill 

The  Common  Ground   .  .  .  .  .33 

Common  ground  of  worship — Christianity's  im- 
pact with  non-Christian  races  on  this  common 
ground — Animistic  religions — Ancestor  worship — 
Hinduism — Need  for  sympathetic  insight  and 
vision — World  must  accept  the  highest. 


x  CONTENTS 

IV 

PAGE 

The  Problems  of  the  Infant  Church        .  .     49 

What  the  coming  of  Christianity  means — The 
problems  that  ensue — Problem  of  polygamy — Of 
caste — Of  ancestor  worship — The  necessity  for 
Christianity  being  again  Orientalised — The  ne- 
cessity for  the  native  Church  getting  a  free 
hand — Mass  movements — Judge  not. 

V 

The  Problem  of  Education  .  .  .  .69 

The  illiterate  mass — Mistaken  policy  in  India — 
Lord  Macaulay — Importance  of  the  vernacular — 
How  Christianity  became  indigenous  at  the  first 
— Only  through  the  vernacular  can  it  become 
indigenous  now — Importance  of  Christian  colleges 
as  means  of  reaching  the  Hindus — The  two 
alternatives. 

VI 

The  Training  of  Missionaries  .  .  .89 

Necessity  for  thorough  preparation — Essential 
that  language  be  mastered — Lord  Cromer — A 
ready-made  religion  and  a  ready-made  civili- 
sation useless — Necessity  for  general  knowledge, 
and  [insight  into  what  is  essential  to  religion — 
Missionaries  unable  to  argue  with  Mohammedans 
— Character  the  great  power. 

VII 

The  Problem  of  Church  and  State  .  .  103 

Christianity  in  relation  to  non-Christian  Govern- 
ments— A  varying  problem — Changed  attitude  of 


XI 


PAGE 


CONTENTS 


Christianity  — Will  not  accept  blood-money  — 
Policy  of  the  "Mailed  Fist  "—Co-operation  with 
Governments  in  sphere  of  education— Unsatis- 
factory attitude  of  British  Government  towards 
Christianity  in  Africa. 


VIII 

The  Paramount  Factor  .  .  ,  .119 

The  native  Church— How  Christianity  spread  at 
the  first — World  must  be  evangelised  by  the 
native  Church— Already  begun  in  Manchuria  and 
Korea — The  causes  which  make  the  native  Church 
the  instrument— Indigenous— Knows  the  language 
—A  living  demonstration— The  enthusiasm  of  first 
love— Principal  Rainy  and  the  native  Christians. 


IX 

The  Impelling  Motive— "For  My  Sake"  .  .  133 

Necessity  for  a  strong  base  for  Christian  army— 
The  question  of  diffusion  or  concentration  — 
Diffusion  the  historic  policy— Motives  impelling 
Church  forward— Needs  of  man— And  the  glory 
of  Jesus  Christ— Motive  of  personal  obligation  to 
Jesus  Christ. 


sThat  the  World  may  Believe"— The  Call  to 

Union    ......  147 

The  primal  condition  laid  down  by  Christ— The 
citadel  within  which  unity  is  realised — The  belief 
in  the  Incarnation  and  the  indwelling  of  the  Holy 
Spirit — Difficulties  in  way  of  corporate  union 


/ 


/ 


xii  CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Influence  of  Missions  on  the  unity  of  the  Church 
—  Necessity  for  an  International  Board  of 
Missions  —  Christianity  being  saved  on  the 
mission-field. 


XI 

The  Great  Opportunity         ....  167 

The  open  doors — The  opened  ways — The  opened 
hearts  of  the  nations — The  working  of  God — The 
plastic  condition  of  non-Christian  nations — Lost 
opportunities  in  Africa; — Will  the  opportunity  be 
lost  now  ? — Will  the  West  deprive  the  East  of  its 
ancient  faiths  without  giving  a  higher? — Chris- 
tianity's great  opportunity  to  develop  itself  in 
the  West — "Now  let  me  burn  out  for  God." 

XII 

It  Shall,  be  Won — Nil  Despebandum  Chbisto  Dlce  .  181 

Mood  of  pessimism  —  Mood  of  optimism — The 
three  great  forces  :  Unity,  Prayer,  Consecration 
— The  day  of  triumph  breaking  over  all  lands. 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 


Insufficiency  of  present  effort — Changed  attitude  of 
Missions  —  Greatness  of  the  feld  —  Africa  —  Power  of 
Islam — Malay  Archipelago  —  India  —  Unoccupied  fields — 
Over  120,000,000  outside  the  reach  of  Christianity — 
Church  must  fall  back  on  God. 


THE   STUPENDOUS   TASK 

"Christianity  is  the  Religion,    even  in  Name,  op 
only  One-third  of  the  Human  Race" 

rnHE  question  which  the  World  Missionary 
Conference  has  left  ringing  in  the  ears  of 
Christendom  is  this  :  "  Can  the  world  be  won 
for  Christ  ?  "  For  the  first  time  the  whole  field 
of  Christian  Missions  has  been  explored ;  the 
disunited  efforts  put  forth  by  the  Churches 
have  been  surveyed ;  the  vast  areas  as  yet 
untouched  and  unoccupied  in  the  name  of 
Christ  have  been  tabulated;  and  the  Christian 
world  has  been  brought  face  to  face,  for  the 
first  time,  with  the  full  difficulty  of  the  work 
which  remains  to  be  accomplished  ere  the 
Church  will  have  fulfilled  the  last  command 
of  her  Lord,  "Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and 
preach  the  Gospel  to  every  creature."  It  has 
had  also  presented  to  it  the  feebleness  of  the 

Won  for  Christ  3 


4  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

efforts  now  made  to  cope  with  this  great  work. 
For  the  first  time  the  enterprise  of  Christian 
Missions  has  been  scientifically  examined  and 
appraised.  It  now  remains  for  the  Churches 
to  learn  the  lessons  which  the  greatest  of 
Missionary  Conferences  tried  to  teach — and, 
having  learned,  to  act  on  them. 

The  day  is  not  far  distant  when  Christians 
took  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  Christianity 
would  conquer  the  world.  It  did  not  really 
matter  much  what  effort  was  put  forth — for 
was  it  not  written  in  the  Book  that  it  would 
conquer  ?  And  it  would  be  so  !  To  those  who 
cherish  this  delusion  it  must  be  a  shock  to 
realise  that  the  present  amount  of  missionary 
activity  is  wholly  insufficient  to  conquer 
heathenism.  At  one  time  the  West  thought 
that  the  East  would  inevitably  bow  down 
before  it  and  receive  its  civilisation  and  its 
religion.  But  no  longer  has  the  East  any 
thought  of  bowing  down  before  the  West — 
it  is  awakened  to  a  sense  of  its  own  latent 
power,  and  is  preparing  itself  to  contest  the 
sovereignty  of  the  world  with  the  West. 
And  the  other  fact  that  is  apparent  is  the 
wonderfully   altered   attitude   of   the   Christian 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK  5 

world  to  the  non-Christian  world.  Formerly 
the  Christian  missionary  went  to  the  heathen, 
and  said,  "Your  religion  is  a  lie,  and  if  you 
hold  to  it  you  are  damned."  But  now  other 
thoughts  and  worthier  conceptions  of  God 
have  come  to  the  Christian  world,  and  the 
missionary  no  longer  says,  "  Your  religion 
is  a  lie ; "  what  he  says  is,  "  Your  religion 
has  the  root  of  the  matter  in  it ;  you,  too, 
feel  the  hunger  for  the  Eternal  even  as  we 
do ;  you  have  the  half-truth — we  bring  you 
the  whole  truth."  In  this  changed  attitude 
lies  a  complete  revolution  in  missionary 
methods.  Ere  the  missionary  in  these  days 
sets  himself  to  build  the  city  of  God,  he 
must  first  of  all  ascertain  how  far  the  city 
is  built  to  his  hands. 

The  first  step  towards  the  successful  ac- 
complishment of  any  work  is  to  realise  its 
difficulty,  and  so  adjust  the  means  to  the 
task.  And  the  report  of  the  Commission  on 
the  Non-Christian  World  will  make  the 
Churches  realise  as  never  before  the  over- 
whelming magnitude  of  the  work  yet  to  be 
accomplished  ere  the  world  is  won  for 
Christianity.      If    we    take    the     continent    of 


6  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

Africa  as   an   example,   we    shall   realise   what 
heroic    effort     the     Christian     Churches    must 
put  forth   if   Africa    is   not   to   be   lost   to   the 
Christian  ideal.     The   total   population   of  that 
continent    is    reckoned    at    180    millions,    only 
half  the  population  of  China,  but  this  popula- 
tion is  scattered   over   a   territory  three  times 
the   size   of   Europe.      One    missionary  reports 
of  the    sphere    of    his    labours :    "  The   field   is 
as    large    as     Germany ;     its     population    only 
amounts  to  a  hundred   thousand,"   and  in  this 
continent    there    is    a    bewildering    variety   of 
tribes    and    languages.      The    mission  -  field   of 
one  society  includes  thirty  different  languages  ! 
In  the  whole  of  Africa   there   are  reckoned  to 
be   no   less   than    523    different  languages   and 
320  different  dialects,   and  beyond  three  small 
sections  of  the  continent  there  is  not  a  single 
tribe   with   a   literature   or    even    an    alphabet 
of  its   own.      And   all   that   mass   of  humanity 
is    sunk    in     the    degradation    of    Polytheism, 
harassed  by  tribal  wars,   the   prey  to   grossest 
superstition.      The   task   of   Christianity  under 
these   conditions   is    not   the   preaching   of  the 
gospel  merely — it  is   the  bringing  of  education, 
of  letters,  of  agriculture,  of  all  the  elementary 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK  7 

facts  of  civilisation.  The  stupendous  work  to 
which  the  Church  is  called  is  not  so  much 
the  teaching  of  a  creed  as  laying  the  founda- 
tions of  civilisation. 

But  not  only  is  Christianity  confronted  with 
the  vast  mass  of  degraded  humanity  opposing 
all  progress  by  the  dead  weight  of  its  im- 
passivity, but  it  is  also  met  by  a  persistent, 
unresting,  and  powerful  opponent — Islam.  The 
rapid  advance  of  Islam  is  the  great  danger 
facing  Christianity  in  Africa.  Any  one  who 
cares  to  consider  the  matter  will  realise  what 
a  loss  it  would  be  to  the  world  were  Moham- 
medanism to  conquer  Africa.  It  is  a  religion 
without  any  knowledge  of  the  Divine  Father- 
hood or  human  brotherhood,  without  com- 
passion or  purity — and  to  womanhood  it  means 
despair.  We  have  only  to  consider  the  state 
of  those  countries  in  which  Islam  has  been 
dominant  for  centuries  to  realise  how  great 
a  calamity  it  would  be  were  Africa  to 
become  its  prey.  And  at  present  there  is 
no  doubt  Islam  is  conquering  Africa.  It 
has  on  its  side  the  power  of  prestige  ! 
To  our  Western  complacency  it  seems  in- 
credible  that   our   religion   should   be   despised 


8  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

as  an  inferior  thing.  Yet  to  the  Moham- 
medan Christianity  is  a  thing  to  be  despised. 
Islam  has  already  conquered  Christianity 
in  Asia — that  degenerate  Christianity  which 
spent  its  strength  fighting  about  dogmas 
and  words  Mohammedanism  swept  before  it 
as  chaff.  The  Crescent  replaced  the  Cross  in 
Asia.  The  Church  Mosque  of  St.  John  the 
Baptist  dominates  that  most  ancient  of  cities, 
Damascus,  and  the  Cross  crowned  and  domi- 
nated the  great  Church  once.  And  on  the 
architrave  of  a  beautiful  gate  in  one  of  the 
transepts  a  triumphant  verse  was  carved  by 
the  Christian  builders  : — 

1 '  Thy  kingdom,  O  Christ,  is  a  kingdom  of  all  ages  ; 
And  Thy  dominion  endureth  throughout  all  generations." 

To-day  the  Crescent  has  replaced  the  Cross 
on  that  great  fane ;  and  the  worshippers  within 
pray  to  Allah.  The  inscription  alone  re- 
mains— a  pathetic  and  ironic  relic.  And 
that  Church,  now  a  mosque,  visualises  for  us 
the  fate  which  has  overtaken  Christianity 
in  the  near  East.  To  Islam  it  seems  as 
if  Christianity  were    only  an  imperfect  faith, 


THE   STUPENDOUS  TASK  9 

which  served  its  day  and  was  replaced  by  the 
perfect  revelation  of  Mohammed.  In  Arabia 
the  traveller  can  see  a  great  cavalry  barracks 
which  was  once  a  Christian  cathedral,  and 
seeing,  he  no  longer  wonders  that  to  the 
Moslem  Christianity  should  appear  a  religion 
susperseded  and  outworn.  And  this  great 
religion,  issuing  from  its  northern  strongholds, 
is  now  sweeping  over  Africa.  In  the  great 
Mohammedan  University  at  Cairo  there  are 
ten  thousand  students.  Thence  the  propaganda 
of  Islam  spreads,  and  if  that  propaganda  is  to 
be  arrested  it  must  be  attacked  at  its  source. 
And  the  difficulty  of  that  is  apparent  when 
we  think  how  to  the  Mohammedan,  with  his 
haughty  contempt  of  Christianity,  which  is 
to  him  but  an  antiquated  religion  set  aside 
by  Allah,  conversion  to  Christianity  is  as  in- 
conceivable as  a  return  to  Judaism  is 
to  a  Christian.  To-day  there  are  in  Africa 
nearly  sixty  millions  of  Mohammedans — a 
third  of  the  whole  population.  And  when 
once  the  African  embraces  Islam  there  is 
little  hope  of  his  ever  becoming  a  Christian. 
To-day  Africa  has  become  the  battle- 
ground   in    which     Christianity    and    Moham- 


10  THE   STUPENDOUS   TASK 

medanism     contend    for     the    destinies     of     a 
continent. 

How  comes  it  then  that  Islam  is  sweeping 
through  Africa  like  a  prairie  fire  ?  It  is  partly 
because  Islam  presents  a  lower  ideal,  adopts 
no  uncompromising  attitude  towards  matters 
which  Christianity  will  never  permit,  counte- 
nances polygamy,  and  without  demanding  sacri- 
fice confers  a  higher  social  status.  Its  creed 
is,  moreover,  of  the  simplest :  "  There  is 
no  God  but  Allah  and  Mohammed  is  his 
prophet,"  is  its  only  doctrinal  test.  The 
most  ignorant  can  grasp  it.  It  is  far  other- 
wise with  the  "  Three  Persons  but  One  God," 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  the  Christian  creeds. 
But  the  chief  cause  is  that  every  Mohammedan 
trader  is  a  zealous  propagandist.  The  tradi- 
tional attitude  of  the  Christian  trader  is  one 
of  indifference,  if  not  hostility,  to  the  mis- 
sionary enterprise  of  his  faith.  The  Christian 
State  looked  with  distrust  on  Christian 
missions.  Missionaries  had  to  make  their  way 
to  India  in  foreign  ships.  English  ships  re- 
fused them  a  passage.  To  this  day  Britain 
in  the  Soudan  forbids  an  active  Christian 
propaganda !      But    how    different    all    this   is 


THE  STUPENDOUS   TASK  11 

with  Islam.  Every  follower  of  Mohammed  is 
a  missionary  aflame  with  zeal  for  his  faith. 
The  result  is  that  all  over  the  continent  the 
situation  is  critical.  In  almost  every  district 
it  is  reported  that  "  the  country  is  now  more 
largely  Mohammedan  than  pagan,  and  the 
Mohammedans  are  steadily  pushing  into  pagan 
districts."  Long  ago  the  churches  of  Tertullian, 
Cyprian,  and  Augustine  succumbed  before 
the  virile  might  of  Islam.  The  question  now 
is,  whether  the  whole  of  Africa  is  to  share 
their  fate.  "  Islam  is  the  only  one  of  the 
great  religions  to  come  after  Christianity ; 
the  only  one  that  definitely  claims  to  correct, 
complete,  and  supersede  Christianity;  the  only 
one  that  categorically  denies  the  truth  of 
Christianity ;  the  only  one  that  has  in  the 
past  signally  defeated  Christianity;  the  only 
one  that  seriously  disputes  the  world  with 
Christianity ;  the  only  one  which  in  several 
parts  of  the  world  is  to-day  forestalling  and 
gaining  on  Christianity."  The  menace  of  Islam 
is  indeed  great. 

And  it  is  now  even  as  it  was  at  the 
beginning.  Then  Christianity  spent  its  strength 
in  wrangling  regarding  metaphysical  theology 


12  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

and  the  Church  was  rent  by  a  burning  hatred 
of  sect  for  sect.  When  Islam  emerged  from 
the  desert  the  one  sect  exulted  that  the  other 
sect  was  smitten.  In  the  seventh  century  the 
Church  failed  because  it  was  disunited.  To-day 
a  disunited  Christianity  is  impotent  to  face  the 
peril  to  Christianity  in  Africa.  While  Moham- 
medanism is  spreading  like  a  fire,  Christianity 
creeps  like  a  snail.  Its  agents,  miserably  few 
in  number  in  proportion  to  the  work,  are  not 
even  properly  distributed.  There  is  even  over- 
lapping. "In  the  Shire  Highlands  .  .  .  the 
Church  of  Scotland  mission,  properly  developed, 
might  have  sufficed,  .  .  .  but  seven  other 
missions  have  come  in.  ..."  Over  against  the 
sporadic,  disunited  efforts  of  Christianity  there 
is  the   united,  persistent,  conquering  campaign 

of  Islam. 

It  is  not  in  Africa  merely  that  Christianity 
finds  itself  confronted  by  the  zealous  and 
powerful  propaganda  of  Islam.  In  India  there 
are  over  sixty-four  millions  of  Mohammedans, 
and  in  the  ten  years  preceding  the  last  census 
there  was  an  increase  in  their  numbers  of 
about  six  millions.  In  China  there  are  over 
twenty  millions   of  Moslems.     In  New    Guinea 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK  13 

and  the  Malay  Archipelego  Islam  has  now 
almost  undisputed  possession,  numbering  as 
its  adherents  about  thirty-five  millions,  and 
it  carries  on  its  propaganda  with  its  ancient 
thoroughness  and  fanaticism.  And,  more 
startling  still,  in  one  province  of  the  Russian 
Empire,  since  religious  toleration  was  pro- 
claimed, one  hundred  thousand  Christians 
have  become  Moslem.  We  took  it  for  granted 
that  by  the  mere  form  of  a  superior  civilisa- 
tion Christianity  would  win ;  but  while  we 
rested  on  a  supposition,  Islam,  with  an  un- 
resting ardour,  was  conquering  the  heathen 
world  for  Mohammed.  The  Cross  stood  still, 
while  the  Crescent  swept  from  the  Levant 
through  India  to  the  islands  of  the  Pacific 
and  penetrated  into  the  deep  recesses  of  Africa. 
Because  Christianity  slumbered  then  it  will 
need  a  mighty  effort  now  to  replace  the 
Crescent  by  the  Cross. 

But  the  difficulty  of  the  stupendous  task  of 
winning  the  world  for  Jesus  Christ  is  far  from 
being  realised  yet.  We  have  to  look  beyond 
Islam  and  see  the  forces  of  the  non-Christian 
religions  arrayed  in  the  antagonism  of  their 
strength.     In   India  we   are  faced  by  a  gross 


14  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

population  of  three  hundred  millions,  speaking 
147  languages,  entrenched  behind  Hindu 
Pantheism,  whose  roots  lie  deep  in  gross  super- 
stitions, and  whose  upper  branches  wave  in 
the  thin  air  of  Theosophy.  The  three  hundred 
millions  of  China,  welded  into  one  by  the  rites 
of  ancestor  worship,  without  so  much  as  words 
in  their  language  to  express  "  sin "  and  "  holi- 
ness," bar  the  path  of  Christianity  with  their 
hatred  of  everything  to  which  the  word 
"  foreign "  can  be  applied.  The  sixty  millions 
of  Japan,  knowing  no  higher  worship  than 
the  worship  of  the  Emperor,  see  in  Chris- 
tianity little  but  an  enemy  to  their  loyalty  to 
the  earthly  ruler.  To  these  the  message  of 
Christianity  has  already  come  in  some  small 
measure.  But  beyond  these  again  lies  the 
huge  mass  of  the  world's  population,  which 
is  yet  wholly  outside  the  reach  of  all  the 
evangelising  agencies  of  Christianity.  In  Africa 
alone  there  are  yet  seventy  millions  wholly 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  furthest  outstretched 
arm  of  Christianity.  After  a  century  of  mis- 
sionary activity  there  are  still  in  the  world 
one  hundred  and  twenty  millions  outside  the 
influence   of   any   Christian    agency — to    whose 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK  15 

ears    the    evangel    of    Jesus    Christ    cannot   so 
much  as  come.     They  are  distributed  thus : — 

Asia,  including  Mongolia,  Turkestan, 
Afghanistan,    Tibet,    Bhutan,    and 

Nepel 42,000,000 

Africa      70,000,000 

Arabia 3,000,000 

Syria        550,000 

Sinaitic  Peninsula         50,000 

Eastern  Sumatra  and  adjacent  islands  3,250,000 

Medusa,  Bali,  and  Lombok  Islands  ...  2,000,000 

Malay  Peninsula           1,000,000 


121,850,000 


If  in  that  aggregate  of  the  races  still  unreached 
by  Christianity  are  included  the  populations  in 
areas  nominally  reached,  but  really  untouched 
by  the  gospel  because  of  the  feebleness  of  the 
Christian  effort,  the  total  population  of  the 
world  still  wholly  outside  the  possible  influence 
of  Christianity  cannot  be  far  short  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  millions.  (These  figures  are 
necessarily  only  approximate.) 

Such,  then,  is  the  stupendous  task  which 
lies  before  Christianity.  All  that  vast  mass 
of  ignorance,  superstition,  idolatry,  and  degra- 
dation  has   to   be   permeated  by  the  influence 


16  THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK 

of  Jesus  Christ  ere  the  world  can  be  won  for 
Christianity.  More  than  a  hundred  years  have 
passed  since  Carey  set  forth  to  India,  and  the 
work  of  winning  the  world  began  anew.  Only 
the  fringe  of  the  great  territory  has  been 
touched ;  only  a  handful  out  of  the  great 
hosts  has  been  gathered  into  the  Christian  fold. 
We  have  so  far  only  been  playing  at  the  work. 
We  have  relied  on  a  campaign  of  flying 
columns  for  the  conquest  of  the  world.  The 
call  which  now  rings  in  the  ears  of  the  Churches 
is  a  call  summoning  to  a  concerted  world-wide 
campaign.  The  day  of  playing  at  this  work  is 
past.  The  day  of  self-sacrifice  is  come.  What 
Christianity  is  summoned  to  prove  is  this: 
to  establish  its  claim  to  wield  the  destinies  of 
the  world.  Is  it  a  living  and  a  conquering 
energy — or  a  decadent  and  a  spent  force?  In 
Abyssinia  a  degenerate  Christian  Church  is 
yielding  day  by  day  converts  to  Islam.  Is  that 
to  be  the  fate  of  Christianity  as  a  whole  ?  As 
one  surveys  the  ancient  races  entrenched  in 
their  hoary  faiths,  and  the  vast  territories  still 
unoccupied  and  untouched  by  Christianity; 
as  one  sees  the  forces  of  ignorance  and  super- 
stition and  lust  massed,  presenting  a  solid  front 


THE  STUPENDOUS  TASK  17 

against  the  progress  of  the  gospel ;  and  as  one 
looks  at  the  Christian  Churches  and  sees  how 
few  they  are  who  feel  the  call  to  go  forth 
and  conquer  the  world,  and  how  few  are 
willing  to  make  any  sacrifice  for  the  glory 
of  their  Lord — then  there  comes  the  hesitating 
doubt :  can  this  task  ever  be  accomplished  ? 
And  the  question  rings  in  the  ear,  uncertain 
of  its  answer,  "Can  the  world  be  won  for 
Christ?"  But  the  question  throws  us  back  on 
God.  With  Him  the  answer  lies.  Can  the 
Church  find  now,  as  the  Church  ever  found 
of  old  in  the  day  of  trial,  such  new  treasures 
of  power  and  energy,  and  vitalising  force,  such 
new  revelations  of  the  riches  and  the  glory  of 
God,  that  it  will  arise  and  go  forth  and  conquer, 
not  in  its  own  strength,  but  in  the  irresistible 
might  of  God  ?  Therein  lies  the  hope  of  con- 
quering the  world  for  Jesus  Christ.  The 
summons  that  rings  through  Christendom  is 
a  summons  calling  the  Christian  host,  if  it 
would  conquer,  to  fall  back  on  God.  To  the 
world  the  task  may  seem  impossible,  and  its 
performance  a  vain  dream,  but  what  are 
Christians  in  the  world  for  but  to  achieve  the 
impossible  by  the  help  of  God! 

Won  for  Christ.  3 


CAN  CHEISTIANITY  JUSTIFY  ITS   CLAIM  ? 


Claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  final  religion — Three  great 
arguments  for  its  claim  :  It  embraces  (1)  Perfect  ideal  of 
man  ;  (2)  Perfect  ideal  of  God  ;  (3)  Makes  these  ideals 
operative  in  the  lives  of  men — They  who  see  the  Vision 
must  follow  it  to  the  farthest  ends  of  the  earth. 


II 


CAN   CHRISTIANITY   JUSTIFY   ITS   CLAIM? 

rpHE  claim  of  Christianity  is  this :  that  it 
-J-  is  the  final  religion.  It  arrogates  to  itself 
the  unique  and  pre-eminent  place  as  the  religion 
destined  to  sway  the  spiritual  forces  of  the 
whole  world.  In  this  Christianity  is  not  alone, 
for  Islam  also  has  dreamed  of  a  world-empire, 
and  dreams  of  it  still.  It  is  that  dream  that 
hovers  before  the  eyes  of  the  devotees  of 
Mohammed  as  they  sweep  through  Africa 
with  the  cry  ere  dawn,  "  Come  to  prayer,  come 
to  salvation,  for  prayer  is  better  than  sleep." 
Judaism  dreamed  the  same  dream.  There  has 
been  no  great  religion  but  has  felt  the  stirring 
of  it.  The  question  is  :  Can  Christianity  justify 
its  claim  to  be  the  final  universal  religion? 
Can  it  be  that  its  dream  is  baseless  as  these 
others  ?  The  power  behind  the  missionary 
enterprise   depends  on  the  answer.     If   we   are 

21 


22  CAN  CHRISTIANITY 

convinced  that  Christianity's  claim  to  be  the 
world-religion  springs  from  its  inherent  truth, 
that  it  enshrines  the  highest  ideal  of  God  and 
man,  and  that  it  alone  worthily  satisfies  the 
soul's  hunger,  then  there  comes  the  passionate 
desire  to  make  that  religion  which  is  the 
highest  and  the  noblest  operative  throughout 
the  whole  world.  It  is  only  when  our  souls 
are  convinced  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God's  last 
and  greatest  Word  for  men,  when  we  see  Him 
towering  above  all  powers  and  systems  and 
teachers,  alone,  unapproachable  —  only  then 
are  we  able  to  follow  Him  to  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  earth.  And  if  we  follow  Him  at 
all,  we  must  be  prepared  to  follow  Him  there. 

There  are  three  great  reasons  on  the  ground 
of  which  we  can  claim  that  Christianity  is  the 
absolute  and  final  religion. 

1.  It  enshrines  the  perfect  ideal  of  man. 

2.  It  enshrines  the  perfect  ideal  of  God. 

3.  It  makes  these   perfect  ideals   operative 

in  the  lives  of  men  and  in  the  develop- 
ment of  nations. 

1.  The  highest  ideal  of  man. 

Men  in  every  age  have  fashioned  for  them- 


JUSTIFY  ITS   CLAIM?  23 

selves  the  ideal  man.  He  has  gleamed  before 
the  eyes  of  men  as  perfect  in  physical  form — the 
ideal  of  beauty ;  as  perfect  in  mind  and  in  will — 
the  ideal  of  power ;  as  perfect  in  spiritual  per- 
ception, spurning  the  seen  and  the  temporal, 
merged  in  the  unseen  and  eternal ;  but  when 
we  come  face  to  face  with  Jesus  Christ,  all  the 
veils  of  words  and  all  the  mists  of  dogma 
swept  aside,  and  we  see  Him  walking  in 
Galilee,  setting  His  face  towards  the  Cross, 
there  rises  in  our  souls  the  abiding  conviction 
that  He  is  the  perfect  ideal,  God's  highest 
thought  for  men. 

All  others  are  sin-soiled  and  imperfect.  He 
alone  is  without  spot  and  without  blemish. 
What  humanity  has  hungered  for  —  He  is. 
Peasants  and  fishermen  did  not  imagine  Him ; 
it  would  have  been  a  miracle  greater  than 
the  wonder  of  His  personality,  if  they  had 
invented  Him.  He  is  without  thought  of  self; 
He  is  crucified  to  the  world.  Children  crowd 
round  His  knees  ;  the  poor  find  their  riches  in 
Him  ;  the  pain-tossed  in  the  light  of  His  coun- 
tenance become  oblivious  of  their  pain ;  the 
sorrowful  are  comforted ;  the  outcasts  find 
themselves  again. 


24  CAN  CHRISTIANITY 

His  life  is  the  life  of  sacrifice.  All  ages  have 
felt  the  nobility  of  that.  The  degraded  and 
the  low  cannot  fall  below  the  feeling  that 
the  greatest  thing  in  life  is  to  lay  it  down. 
The  drunkard  will  rush  to  death  to  save  a 
child  from  death — his  heart  feels  the  spirit  of 
sacrifice  which  naught  can  quench.  And  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  embodiment  of  all  self-sacrifice. 
He  lays  down  His  life  of  Himself.  The  Cross 
is  Sacrifice's  last  word. 

The  world  of  men  may  undergo  changes 
which  will  make  humanity  well-nigh  unrecog- 
nisable centuries  hence.  But  whosoever  has 
seen  Jesus  Christ  in  the  perfection  of  His  sin- 
less life,  of  His  self-forgetting  love,  of  His 
tender  sympathy,  of  His  unclouded  joyousness, 
of  His  self-sacrificing  death,  has  felt  the  assur- 
ance that  humanity  cannot  advance  beyond 
that  perfect  Ideal  which  He  enshrines.  He  is 
God's  last  word  as  the  ideal  for  His  children. 

2.  Christianity  enshrines  the  perfect  ideal  of 
God. 

Apart  from  Christianity  we  would  have  many 
conceptions  of  God — but  without  Christianity 
we  would  never  have  those  conceptions  of 
God  which   are   the   highest,   the   noblest,   and 


JUSTIFY  ITS  CLAIM?  25 

the  best.  We  could  conceive  the  omnipotence 
of  God — a  God  that  could  crush  the  universe 
in  the  blindness  of  His  power ;  but  the  soul 
that  knew  it  was  being  crushed  would  be 
greater  than  the  blind,  unknowing  power  that 
crushed  it  even  though  that  power  were  omni- 
potent. We  could  conceive  God  as  pervading 
all  things,  the  life  of  all  that  is — as  the  "  God- 
intoxicated  "  Hindu  has  conceived  Him,  an 
impersonal  life  and  power ;  but  He  would  be 
a  God  with  no  eye  to  pity,  no  heart  to 
sympathise,  and  no  arm  to  save.  But  the 
great  things — we  could  have  no  conception 
of  them  apart  from  Jesus  Christ.  And  these 
attributes  which  are  the  highest  in  God  are 
Love,  Fatherhood,  and  Sacrifice. 

God's  love  is  revealed  in  Jesus  Christ  alone. 
How  otherwise  could  the  love  of  God  be 
revealed?  Love  is  not  a  glory  in  the  heavens. 
Love  reveals  itself  through  a  personality,  looks 
out  through  human  eyes,  speaks  through 
human  lips,  manifests  itself  in  the  thousand 
activities  of  sympathy  and  tenderness.  The 
Divine  Love  moved  among  men  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  when  we  hear  His  voice 
saying,    "He   that   has   seen   Me   has   seen   the 


26  CAN   CHRISTIANITY 

Father " — we,  seeing  Him,  realise  what  the 
love  of  the  Father  is.  For  that  Love  has 
become  visible  and  operative  among  men. 
And  love  is  sacrifice.  The  earthly  father  who 
sacrifices  himself  for  his  child  would  be  greater 
than  a  God  who  knew  not  that  love  which 
is  sacrifice.  Only  Jesus  Christ  brings  us  the 
knowledge  that  the  love  of  God  is  the  love 
that  sacrifices — the  love  that  lays  hold  on  us, 
and  will  not  let  us  go,  and  empties  itself,  and 
endures  a  cross  that  we  may  be  blessed  and 
saved.  Human  love  says  :  Let  me  carry  your 
burden ;  the  Love  Divine  says  also :  Let  Me 
carry  your  burden — though  carrying  it  mean 
a  cross  and  a  crown  of  thorns. 

And  all  this  brings  to  the  heart  the  deepest 
of  all  things — that  God  is  Fatherhood.  For 
Fatherhood  is  Love  and  Sacrifice — and  these 
are  the  great  truths  Christ  reveals  to  our 
souls.  Only  the  voice  of  Jesus  can  teach  our 
faces  to  turn  upward,  and  our  lips  to  falter, 
"Our  Father."  The  great  things,  that  God  is 
Father,  is  love,  is  self-sacrifice,  is  righteousness 
and  yet  forgiveness,  is  justice  and  yet  mercy — 
these  things  come  to  us  through  Jesus  Christ 
alone.     The  perfect  ideal  of  God,   with   all   the 


JUSTIFY  ITS   CLAIM?  27 

attributes  of  omnipotence,  omnipresence,  holi- 
ness, love,  with  all  the  power  and  all  the  will 
to  help  and  to  save,  is  enshrined  in  Christianity. 
Through  it  alone  comes  to  men  the  vision  of 
God,  the  Lover  of  our  souls,  the  Father  of  our 
spirits,  the  preserver  of  our  bodies,  which  men 
beholding  have  in  the  ecstasy  of  self-surrender 
laid  hold  upon  saying,  "Abba  Father." 

3.  Christianity  makes  these  ideals  operative 
in  the  lives  of  men  and  in  the  development  of 
nations. 

It  would  have  been  a  poor  thing  to  reveal 
the  ideal  were  there  no  power  conferred  to 
realise  the  ideal.  Christianity  reveals  a  perfect 
ideal  and  the  power  through  which  it  is 
realised.  It  has  satisfied  the  soul  hunger  of 
humanity — for  it  has  brought  God  to  them. 
It  has  revealed  the  right  way  of  coming  into 
communion  with  God. 

Whereas  men  had  rooted  religion  and  the 
proper  access  to  God  in  their  own  efforts, 
saying,  Keep  the  law,  render  sacrifices,  and 
God  will  be  pleased,  Christianity  revealed  the 
source  of  all  the  life  divine  in  God.  "  By  the 
grace  of  God  I  am  what  I  am "  became  its 
watchword.     Through  the  vitalising  energy   of 


28  CAN  CHRISTIANITY 

the  Holy  Spirit  God  came  into  the  hearts 
of  men,  making  them  His  temple,  and  in  the 
power  of  God,  the  life  of  righteousness  became 
not  a  mere  dream,  but  a  living,  practical  reality. 
And  men,  no  longer  running  with  stumbling 
feet,  but  lifted  into  the  chariots  of  God,  wafted 
on  the  wings  of  His  Spirit,  rose  out  of  the 
dust,  laying  hold  on  their  heritage  as  Sons 
of  God. 

For  well-nigh  two  thousand  years  now  it 
has  held  the  field  of  the  world,  and  in  lives 
risen  from  the  dead,  in  nations  transfigured, 
and  in  a  world  transformed,  Christianity  has 
justified  its  claim  to  be  the  world-religion. 
The  gigantic  enterprise  of  Christian  Missions 
does  not  rest  on  a  tremendous  assumption. 
That  enterprise  rests  on  its  own  inherent 
truth,  on  the  experience  of  that  multitude  no 
man  can  number,  who  finding  Christ  found  God. 
On  the  bosom  of  that  river  that  sprang  in  the 
manger  of  Bethlehem,  there  has  come  to  the 
sons  of  men  whatever  of  beauty,  of  goodness,  of 
self-sacrifice,  of  mercy,  of  truth,  of  love  that 
have  enriched  and  now  enrich  the  world.  Its 
power  is  so  great  to  elevate  that  whosoever  re- 
ceives it,  through  that  very  receiving  advances 


JUSTIFY  ITS   CLAIM?  29 

a  thousand  years  in  one  day.  It  comes  to  the 
pagan,  delivering  him  from  the  tyranny  of 
ghosts  and  devils,  and  with  the  revelation  of 
one  God,  who  is  Father  and  is  Love,  transforms 
life  into  jubilee  and  joy.  The  world,  which  to 
the  Hindu  is  but  a  "  weary  and  unprofitable 
maze,"  for  which  the  best  he  can  desire  is  that 
it  may  be  annihilated  as  speedily  as  possible, 
Christianity  transfigures  ;  and  over  everything 
the  sunshine,  and  the  birds,  and  the  sward 
growing  green,  writes  :  "  Your  Father  doeth — 
your  Father  knoweth."  It  came  centuries  ago 
to  a  little  rocky  wind-swept  isle  in  the  Hebrides, 
and  from  that  isle  over  a  land  filled  with  skin- 
clad  savages  the  message  ran,  and  the  Scotland 
of  to-day  is  the  fruit.  And  from  that  Scotland 
now  the  message  goes  East  and  South,  and 
whithersoever  the  message  comes,  the  same 
forces  begin  to  operate.  With  it  comes  deliver- 
ance from  terror,  from  cruelty,  from  hell  upon 
earth ;  and  the  forces  are  unloosed  which 
evolve  the  Christian  states  and  the  civilisa- 
tion of  the  future. 

These  ideals  which  operate  through  Chris- 
tianity the  world  cannot  outgrow.  They  are 
so  great  that  they   demand   eternity  for  their 


80  CAN  CHRISTIANITY 

realisation — so    great    that    we    have    not   yet 
realised  even  a  fraction  of  them.     So  far  from 
Christianity    being    outworn,    the   fact   is   that 
Christianity   in    the    fulness    of    its    ideal    has 
never  yet   been   tried.     Living    Christianity    is 
the   projection   of  the    perfect    life    of    Christ, 
of  the  perfect  teaching  of  Christ,  of  the  perfect 
revelation  of  God  shining  in  the  face  of  Jesus 
Christ,   into    the    midst    of    every    generation. 
These   things   are   so   great   that    the    servants 
of    Jesus    Christ    are   unable    perfectly   to   do 
them.     The  evils  in  the  midst  of  Christendom 
are  due  not  to  the  Christian  ideals,  but  to  the 
failure   to   realise    these    ideals.      These    ideals 
of   righteousness,    purity,   holiness,    of    growth 
into   all  the  perfection  of  God — eternity  alone 
will  suffice  for  their  realisation.     Therefore  time 
shall   not    outgrow    them,    and    the   march    of 
humanity   cannot   leave   Christianity    behind — 
provided  humanity  shall  continue  to  march  God- 
ward.     The  claim  of   Christianity  to  sway  the 
destinies  of  men  is  based  on  this  impregnable 
foundation — its  own  inherent  truth.     Because  it 
is  the  highest  it  claims  for  itself  the  whole  world. 
And  whosoever  has   realised   the   truth  of    its 
claim  will  follow  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  He 


JUSTIFY  ITS   CLAIM?  31 

goeth  forth  to  reveal  the  highest  of  man,  and 
the  highest  of  God,  and  the  highest  of  eternity 
— to  the  farthest  ends  of  the  earth.  They 
who  see  the  vision  must  needs  follow  it,  or  else 
the   vision  passes   and   they  lose   it. 


THE   COMMON  GROUND 


Common  ground  of  worship — Christianity's  compact  with 
non-Christian  races  on  this  common  ground — Animistic 
religions — Ancestor  worship — Hinduism — Need  for  sym- 
pathetic insight  and  vision  —  World  must  accept  the 
highest. 


Ill 


THE   COMMON   GROUND 


r  I  1HE  greatest  of  all  missionaries  was  St. 
-*-  Paul,  and  the  principle  underlying  his 
toils  was  this  :  "I  am  made  all  things  to  all 
men,  that  I  might  by  all  means  save  some." 
That  was  the  spirit  in  which  Christianity 
conquered  at  the  first :  it  is  the  spirit  in 
which  it  must  conquer  now.  And  the  problem 
which  the  Commission  on  the  missionary 
message  in  relation  to  non-Christian  religions 
set  itself  to  solve  was  just  this — how  best 
Christians  can  become  all  things  to  all  men. 
The  magnitude  of  the  problem  can  only  be 
realised  when  we  think  of  the  bewildering 
varieties  of  the  human  race  and  the  multi- 
tudinous stages  of  human  development  from 
the  Animistic  worship  of  man  at  the  lowest 
to  the  deep  thought  of  the  "  God-intoxicated  " 

Won  for  Christ.  35 


36  THE  COMMON  GROUND 

Hindu.  To  Brahmin  and  Moslem,  to  the 
disciple  of  Confucius,  and  to  all  the  strange 
forms  under  which  men  worship,  can  Chris- 
tianity present  itself  on  common  ground,  and 
make  good  its  claim  to  become  all  things 
to  all  men.  The  very  fact  that  they  worship, 
whatever  the  race  or  creed,  is  the  common 
ground.  "As  birds,"  wrote  an  Indian  thinker 
in  the  Vedante,  "  repair  to  a  tree  to  dwell 
therein,  so  all  the  universe  repairs  to  the 
Supreme  Being."  The  expression  is  infinitely 
varied,  the  thing  expressed  is  one.  The  Red 
Indian  blowing  a  few  whiffs  of  tobacco 
towards  heaven  to  propitiate  the  Great  Spirit, 
and  the  Catholic  with  his  good  incense  fumes, 
are  not  so  far  apart  as  they  seem.  Those 
who  think  that  humanity  will  pass  beyond 
that,  forget  the  power  of  an  instinct  mightier 
than  all  reason.  And  the  greatest  thinkers  the 
world  has  produced — be  he  Plato,  or  Aristotle, 
or  Kant,  or  Hegel,  or  Newton — in  this  they 
are  at  one  with  the  lowest  fetish-worshipper 
— they  obey  the  instinct  which  impels  to 
worship.  It  is  on  this  common  ground  that 
Christianity  to-day  seeks  to  meet  the  non- 
Christian     religions.      Let    us     see     how     best 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  37 

Christianity  can  present  its  message  to  the  non- 
Christian  nations  on  this — the  common  ground 
of  worship. 

The  first  that  naturally  falls  to  be  considered 
is  the  religion  of  primitive  races.  Animism 
is  the  worship  of  souls — chiefly  the  spirits  of 
departed  ancestors.  But  it  includes  also  the 
spirit  of  the  flood,  and  thunder,  and  plague, 
and  diverse  others.  The  one  feeling  which 
Animism  inspires  is  terror.  "  Ghosts  of  the 
most  diverse  kinds  lurk  in  house  and  village 
...  in  the  forest.  They  terrify  the  wood- 
cutter;  in  the  bush  they  hunt  the  wanderer, 
malicious  demons  ...  lie  in  wait  for  the 
child  from  the  day  of  its  birth  ;  they  swarm 
round  the  houses  at  night ;  they  spy  through 
the  chinks  of  the  walls  for  their  helpless 
victims.  The  dead  friend  or  brother  becomes 
an  enemy,  and  the  coffin  and  grave  are  the 
abode  of  terror."  It  is  a  world  filled  with 
fear,  at  which  the  aboriginal  tribes  in  Africa 
gaze.  And  the  terror  which  dominates  them 
is  only  equalled  by  the  depths  of  degradation 
to  which  their  lives  descend.  We  can  realise 
what  a  deliverance  there  comes  with  the 
message    of    Christianity  to    these  poor   slaves 


38  THE  COMMON  GROUND 

of  ignorant  terror.  To  be  told  that  the 
Unseen,  which  they  deemed  to  be  full  of 
hostile  forces,  was  really  filled  with  goodness 
and  love  is  for  them  the  breaking  of  their 
chains.  The  message  of  salvation  is  redemp- 
tion from  the  tyranny  of  evil  spirits.  "  Before 
I  became  a  Christian,"  said  one  who  found 
the  great  deliverance,  "  I  was  always  in  fear — 
afraid  of  the  spirits,  afraid  of  the  idols, 
afraid  of  shadows,  afraid  of  things  moving 
in  the  dark — but  now,  thank  God,  I  am  free, 
and  am  afraid  of  nothing."  Low  and  degraded 
though  the  beliefs  of  Animism  be,  yet  they 
are  "  the  effort  of  fellow-men  to  grapple  with 
the  great  problem  of  existence,"  and  the  mis- 
sionary must  rejoice  in  every  element  of 
truth  he  may  find.  The  Unseen  is  very  real 
to  these  harassed  people — the  missionary  has 
to  reveal  its  true  contents.  Sacrifice  is  every- 
where —  the  missionary  can  rear  on  it  the 
truth  of  Christian  sacrifice.  "  To  lighten  a 
dark  room  one  does  not  need  to  sweep  out 
the  dark."  The  reason  why  Islam  makes 
such  great  strides  in  Africa  is  that  it  comes 
as  a  deliverance  from  the  terrors  of  Animism. 
The   sad   thing,  from  the  Christian  standpoint, 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  39 

is  that  this  deliverance  should  be  the  im- 
perfect deliverance  of  Islam,  and  not  the  full 
deliverance  which  comes  from  the  revelation 
of  Divine  love.  To  the  Animist,  the  message 
of  one  God,  and  that  a  God  of  love,  comes 
as  tidings  of  great  joy.  Because  there  is  but 
one  God,  there  is  deliverance  from  the  fear 
of  gods  many,  gods  capricious,  gods  vengeful, 
and  gods  unspeakable.  The  new  life  which 
opens  before  the  convert  is  a  "jubilee  of 
liberty  and  joy."  The  centuries  have  deadened 
us  to  that  joy,  but  on  the  mission  field  we 
realise  again  what  thrilled  the  souls  of  the 
early  Christians  nineteen  centuries  ago ;  we 
feel  the  throb  of  the  words  which  sounded 
in  the  ears  of  those  early  converts  from 
Polytheism,  ringing  from  the  depths  of  a 
prison  —  "  Rejoice  in  the  Lord  alway,  and 
again  I  say  rejoice."  To  the  Animist  Christi- 
anity comes  as  deliverance  from  an  incubus  of 
terror,  and  for  him  its  watchword  is — Rejoice. 
The  problem  facing  Christianity  increases 
in  difficulty  as  it  confronts  the  hoary  civili- 
sation and  the  ancient  religions  of  China  and 
Japan.  Confucianism  is  the  dominant  religion 
of  China,  with  its  essential  teaching  of  a  high 


40  THE  COMMON  GROUND 

regard  for  the  family  and  the  State.  It  knows 
nothing  of  a  Divine  love,  and  has  little  sym- 
pathy with  the  poor,  the  outcast,  and  the 
erring.  It  is  entrenched  behind  the  national 
pride  which  regards  all  the  rest  of  the  world 
as  "Barbarians."  Christianity  comes  to  China 
only  as  a  foreign  religion — that  of  those  who 
insulted  China,  seized  her  territory,  and  de- 
moralised her  people  with  opium.  "  Race 
pride  and  patriotism  both  protest  against 
acceptance  of  a  creed  from  such  a  quarter, 
and  label  the  Chinese  who  do  accept  it  as 
disloyal  renegades."  And  the  whole  fabric 
rests  upon  ancestor  worship  as  the  corner- 
stone. "  By  it  the  life  of  the  nation  has 
been  moulded  to  a  -cohesion  which  has  out- 
lived the  changes  and  vicissitudes  of  five 
thousand  years."  "The  man  who  neglects  it 
seems  an  inhuman  monster,  a  wretch  who 
has  renounced  father,  and  mother,  and  ances- 
tors." Parents  guard  their  children  jealously 
from  all  possible  influence  from  Christianity, 
fearing  lest,  when  they  die,  they  should  be 
left  with  none  to  worship  them — "  un wor- 
shipped beggar  ghosts  in  Hades."  The  pros- 
pect   of    their     children    abandoning    ancestor 


THE   COMMON  GROUND  41 

worship  is  a  nightmare  for  the  Chinese — the 
children  shrink  from  causing  such  dread  to 
their  parents.  And  everywhere  idolatry  has 
entered  into  the  very  web  and  woof  of 
society.  The  great  difficulty  of  presenting 
Christianity  to  the  Chinese  mind  can  be 
realised  from  a  vivid  illustration  used  by 
Dr.  Campbell  Gibson,  "  If  I  addressed  this 
assembly,"  he  said  to  the  World  Missionary 
Conference,  "and  called  you  all  criminals,  you 
would  resent  it  strongly;  but  if  I  called  you 
sinners,  you  would  accept  it  humbly.  In  the 
Chinese  language  there  are  no  words  to 
express  sin  and  sinners  but  crime  and 
criminals."  A  Chinaman,  when  asked  what 
his  sins  were,  answered,  "My  wife  and  my 
mother-in-law."  In  China  heathenism  would 
almost  seem  entrenched  within  an  impregnable 
fortress.  And  yet  there,  too,  Christianity  can 
build  upon  common  ground.  As  with  the 
Animist,  Monotheism  appeals  to  the  Chinese, 
not  as  deliverance  from  terror,  but  as  emi- 
nently reasonable.  The  atmosphere  of  sym- 
pathy, love,  and  friendliness  which  Christianity 
brings,  makes  its  appeal.  "  The  devotion,  self- 
forgetfulness,  and   self-sacrifice  of   some  Chris- 


42  THE  COMMON  GROUND 

tians  make  a  deep  impression.  China  has  no 
such  men  and  women,"  so  writes  a  Chinese. 
And  to  the  spiritual  need  revealed  in  ancestor 
worship  Christianity  brings  the  knowledge  of 
Him  in  whom  all  parents  and  all  children 
live  and  move  and  have  their  being,  bound 
to  Him  in  filial  bonds.  "  The  so-called  worship 
of  ancestors,"  writes  a  missionary,  "can  easily 
be  Christianised,  and  should  be  maintained  in 
this  form  as  a  valuable  national  asset."  "It  is 
certainly  possible  to  imagine  a  transformation 
of  it  into  the  Christian  idea  of  the  great 
Communion  of  Saints,  which  binds  the  seen 
and  the  unseen  in  one  vast  fellowship." 
Apart  from  ancestor  worship,  China  to-day 
presents  the  strange  spectacle  of  being  a 
nation  practically  without  a  religion.  To 
early  Christianity  Rome  made  its  appeal  — 
could  it  be  won  for  the  faith?  To-day  it  is 
the  Chinese  and  the  Japanese — the  races  in 
whose  hands  the  future  of  the  East  will  lie, 
and  which  are  now  palpitating  with  the  stir- 
ring of  new  life — which  make  the  great  appeal 
to  the  Christian  Church.  "Will  their  future 
be  the  upward  path  of  those  who  follow  the 
Highest,    or  the  path  of  tragedy  down  to   the 


THE  COMMON  GROUND  43 

unknown  and  troubled  sea  ? "  When  the 
Church  went  forth  on  the  great  adventure  of 
conquering  the  Eoman  Empire,  it  was  a  puny, 
feeble  thing  compared  to  the  Church  which 
faces  the  Empires  of  the  East.  And  the  con- 
quering power  is  still  within  it.  To-day,  in 
the  far  East,  the  discerning  eye  can  see  how 
"the  whole  confused  world  of  Chinese  religion 
is  being  shot  through  and  through  with 
broken  lights  of  a  hidden  sun,  which  is 
coming  forth  in  splendour  to  run  a  new 
race    in   the   heavens." 

It  is,  however,  in  India  —  that  "  challenge 
of  the  ages  " — that  Christianity  meets  its  most 
formidable  foe  —  Hinduism.  If  the  tree  be 
judged  by  its  fruit,  then  Hinduism  stands 
condemned.  All  Christian  writers  are  at  one 
as  to  the  "petrifaction  of  society  in  the  caste 
system,"  "  the  abuse  of  child  marriage,"  "  the 
infamies  of  popular  idolatry,"  which  prey 
upon  the  heart  of  India.  Yet  Hinduism  has 
enshrined  in  its  "  immemorial  thought " 
profound  and  vital  truths,  through  which  it 
shares  much  common  ground  with  Chris- 
tianity. The  Hindus  are  doubtless  the  strongest 
believers  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  whom 


44  THE   COMMON  GROUND 

the  world  has  ever  known.  With  Hinduism 
the  one  redemption  is  the  realisation  of  unity 
with  the  Supreme  Being.  This,  too,  is  the 
ideal  of  Christianity.  Only  in  that  is  satis- 
faction to  be  found.  In  this  Hinduism  differ- 
entiates itself  from  all  other  non-Christian 
religions.  "  Though  we  were  to  win  all  you 
are  seeking,"  its  sages  say  to  the  Animist,  the 
Confucian,  and  the  Moslem,  "  we  should  still 
be  unsatisfied."  To  the  Hindu  the  world  is  a 
mere  illusion.  The  world  is  nothing  compared 
to  God.  And  it  is  truly  better  to  say  with 
Hinduism  that  the  world  is  nothing  and  God 
all  than  to  say  with  the  modern  materialist 
that  the  world  is  all  and  God  nothing.  To 
the  Hindu,  existence  is  the  cardinal  evil ;  but 
to  the  Christian  the  cardinal  evil  is  sin.  Of 
the  world  the  Hindu  says,  "  Let  it  be  obli- 
terated "  ;  but  Christianity  fills  the  world  with 
God,  and  elevates  its  every  trade  and  call- 
ing into  a  holy  ministry.  In  Hinduism  the 
supreme  good  is  absorption  in  the  Supreme 
Being.  And  to  the  Christian  also  the  supreme 
ideal  is  to  be  filled  with  the  Life  Eternal — 
to  realise  more  and  more  "  the  life  of  God 
in    the    soul   of  man."     The    terms    differ,   the 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  45 

images  vary,  the  modes  of  stretching  out  the 
hand  alter,  but  the  one  thing  the  worshipper 
craves  is  life.  And  the  satisfaction  of  that 
craving  for  unity  with  God  can  never  find 
its  highest  satisfaction  except  through  the 
fulness  of  eternal  life  which  Christianity 
reveals,  and  which  the  Spirit  of  God  commu- 
nicates to  the  souls  of  men.  All  religions  are 
a  "  prayer  for  life."  The  supreme  answer  to 
the  prayer  is  Christianity.  Its  culmination 
and  power  came  when,  on  the  day  of  Pente- 
cost, the  barriers  suddenly  were  thrown  down, 
and  on  the  hearts  of  men  there  poured  the 
encompassing  sea  of  the  Spirit.  And  still  the 
same  vivifying  Spirit  flows  into  the  believing 
hearts,  so  that  the  souls  of  men  find  the  fulness 
of  life  abiding  in  God,  and  God  abiding  in 
them.  This  is  the  answer  to  the  cry  which 
the  Hindu  has  raised  for  weary  centuries — the 
cry  for  absorption  in  God. 

If  there  be  one  thing  most  necessary  for 
the  effective  representation  of  Christianity  to 
the  non-Christian  peoples,  it  is  this — the  power 
of  vision  and  of  an  understanding  heart  which 
will  enable  missionaries  to  realise  the  inner 
meaning   of  the   religions  which  they  seek   to 


46  THE   COMMON   GEOUND 

supplant.  The  Rev.  Dr.  M.  Chatterji,  of  the 
Punjab,  himself  a  converted  Hindu,  tells  how, 
for  a  long  time,  he  stumbled  at  the  doctrine  of 
Atonement.  The  Hindus  have  a  vivid  sense 
of  the  punishment  due  to  the  individual  for 
his  sin,  and  to  them  it  is  inconceivable  that 
another  should  suffer  for  their  sins.  Chris- 
tianity suffers  great  wrong  by  the  crude  repre- 
sentations of  its  doctrines  by  those  who  lack 
the  imagination  and  the  understanding  which 
can  root  its  truths  in  the  beliefs  which  they 
find  operative  in  the  hearts  of  those  they  seek 
to  illumine.  To  a  race  who  hunger  for  the 
Unseen,  who  are  ever  looking  beyond  the 
visible,  to  whom  eternity  is  the  one  reality — 
Christianity  can  come  as  the  satisfaction  of 
its  hunger.  It  can  meet  it  on  common  ground. 
A  great  revolution  has  taken  place  in  the 
manner  in  which  Christianity  presents  itself 
to  the  non-Christian  religions.  When  a  truth 
has  operated  for  good  in  the  life  of  a 
heathen  nation,  however  dim  and  imperfect 
it  may  be,  Christianity  does  not  now  seek  to 
attack  it,  but  to  outflank  it.  It  merges  the  im- 
perfect in  a  higher  truth.  The  other  religions 
are  no  longer  regarded  as   of  the   devil — they 


THE   COMMON   GROUND  47 

are  recognised  as  "  languages  in  which  God 
has  spoken  to  man,  and  man  to  God."  Again 
and  again  there  occur  sentences  like  this, 
written  by  missionaries  :  "  One  cannot  hear 
an  unhappy  old  woman  cry  before  a  daubed 
red  stone  with  the  cry  of  her  heart,  '  O  God, 
help  me ! '  without  realising  that  the  utterance 
of  her  need  itself  has  a  religious  value,  and 
brings  a  return  to  her  spirit."  But  the  recog- 
nition that  through  these  religions  there 
come  broken  syllables  of  the  Eternal  Yoice 
to  the  souls  of  men  only  reveals  the  true  way 
of  bringing  the  perfect  knowledge  to  their 
hearts.  And  that  Christianity  is  that  perfect 
knowledge — of  that  there  is  no  doubt.  For 
whoever  compares  Christianity  to  these  others 
— the  perfect  ideal  of  purity  and  self-sacrifice 
it  enshrines  in  the  person  of  its  Founder,  the 
revelation  of  the  Supreme  Being  as  Father- 
hood, Love,  and  Holiness  which  it  brings,  and 
the  blessings  which  it  confers  on  humanity 
of  freedom,  and  mercy,  and  beneficence — 
cannot  but  feel  that  it  is  the  highest.  The 
claim  for  Christianity  is  this — the  world  must 
accept  the  highest,  and  it  is  the  highest. 
And   therefore   the   call   rings    in    the    ears    of 


48  THE   COMMON   GROUND 

Christendom  to-day :  Arise  and  accept  your 
high  calling  to  make  the  highest  operative 
throughout  the  whole  world.  It  is  a  call  to 
all  that  is  heroic  in  the  Christian  Church. 
If  the  Church  will  only  present  the  person 
of  its  Founder  to  the  world,  then  the  world 
will  receive.  For  to-day  the  quarrel  of  the 
non-Christian  world  is  only  with  Christians — 
but  not  with  Christ. 


THE    PKOBLEMS    OF    THE    INFANT 
CHURCH 


What  the  coming  of  Christianity  means — The  problems 
that  ensue — Problem  of  polygamy — Of  caste — Of  ancestor 
worship — The  necessity  for  Christianity  being  again 
Orientalised — The  necessity  for  the  native  Church  getting 
a  free  hand — Mass  movements — Judge  not. 


IV 


THE   PROBLEMS   OF   THE   INFANT   CHURCH 

TT7HAT  does  it  mean  to  the  heathen  when 
*  *  to  some  dark  place  the  missionary  comes 
and  lights  the  torch  of  Christianity?  That 
great  master  of  English,  Henry  Drummond, 
visualises  what  it  means  in  a  sentence :  "  At 
Tongoa,  on  the  verandah,  in  the  moonlight,  I 
heard  the  evening  psalm  going  up  on  this  side 
and  on  that.  Less  than  four  years  ago,  from 
this  same  verandah,  the  missionary  saw  the 
smoke  ascending  from  roasting  human  flesh." 
You  see  what  it  means  in  a  flash.  Where  the 
awful  rites  of  cannibalism  degraded  men  lower 
than  the  beasts,  where  cruelty  and  ignorance 
and  vice  made  their  habitation,  hither  comes 
Christianity — and  in  a  little  while  the  low  music 
of  psalm  and  prayer  rises  on  this  side  and  on 
that.  The  history  of  missions  is  the  record  of 
that    wondrous    revolution.     To  some  place  in 

Won  for  Christ.  61 


52  THE   PROBLEMS   OF 

Africa  where  the  Arab  slave-drivers  drove  their 
nefarious  traffic,  where  warring  tribes  drenched 
the  land  with  blood,  comes  the  missionary  and 
builds  his  church,  his  school,  and  his  hospital. 
And  soon  the  children  are  learning  to  read,  the 
sick  are  tended,  and  peace  lies  like  a  shaft  across 
the  land.  "A  few  years  ago,"  says  Rev.  J. 
Nettleton,  of  Fiji,  "  in  the  South  Seas  you  could 
buy  a  man  or  a  woman  for  a  guinea  ;  to-day 
you  could  not  buy  a  scraggy  old  woman  for  a 
million  pounds."  We  see  there  what  the  coming 
of  Christianity  means.  It  reveals  the  un- 
purchasable  value  of  human  life.  Christianity 
is  to-day,  as  it  has  always  been,  the  deliverance, 
not  from  a  future  hell,  but  from  the  present 
hell  of  human  degradation  and  misery. 

No  sooner  does  Christianity  come  to  a  non- 
Christian  land  than  the  process  of  building  up 
the  infant  Church  begins.  "Every  soul  that  is 
attracted  by  the  gospel  and  separated  from 
heathenism  is  a  living  organism,  and  immedi- 
ately it  allies  itself  with  other  living  organisms 
of  the  same  type  and  character."  Thus  an 
organised  church  springs  up,  and  having  learned 
to  walk,  anon  begins  to  work,  and  immediately 
it  finds  itself  confronted  with  various  problems 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  53 

— among  these  many  which  the  Church  in  the 
West  has  solved  long  ago,  and  which  the 
Church  in  the  mission-field  must  in  its  turn 
now  solve.  One  of  the  Commissions  of  the 
World  Missionary  Conference  has  dealt  with 
these  problems,  and  their  report  makes 
us  realise  how  complex  the  task  of  win- 
ning the  world  for  Christianity  really  is. 
There  is  the  question  of  what  standard  the 
Church  will  demand  of  her  converts  be- 
fore receiving  them.  Take  the  African  who 
has  more  than  one  wife.  Will  the  Church 
require  him  to  put  away  all  the  wives  except 
the  first  ere  receiving  him  into  member- 
ship ?  This  is  the  usual  condition  ;  but  it  seems 
an  intolerable  wrong  to  these  other  women 
whom  he  married  ere  Christianity  came  to  him. 
How  pressing  this  problem  is  could  be  realised 
from  the  words  of  Professor  Marais,  of  South 
Africa,  who  dissented  from  some  very  moderate 
sentences  in  the  report  which  left  it  optional 
for  missionaries  to  baptize  a  polygamist  while 
denying  him  all  office  in  the  Church.  Professor 
Marais  would  have  no  compromise  with  "this 
deadly  foe  to  pure  family  life." 

In  India,  will   the    Church    demand  that  the 


54  THE  PROBLEMS   OF 

restrictions  of  caste,  which  grip  the  Hindu  with 
the  strength  of  centuries,  be  completely  broken? 
Within  the  caste-system,  170,000,000  of  Hindus 
are  bound  together  in  a  unity  so  strong  that 
the  sense  of  individuality  is  deadened,  and  it 
is  next  to  impossible  for  a  Hindu  to  separate 
himself  from  the  social  scheme  into  which  he 
has  been  born.  The  millions  within  this  system 
look  upon  the  multitude  outside  it  with  loathing 
and  contempt,  and  regard  the  small  fraction 
that  have  become  Christians  as  pariahs  and 
outcasts.  The  Church,  outside  of  this  system 
which  has  been  all  potent  for  centuries,  is  an 
alien  to  the  life  of  India,  and  is  not  Indian 
except  in  a  geographical  sense.  No  question  is 
more  urgent  than  that  of  the  attitude  which 
Christianity  must  adopt  towards  this  all- 
powerful  system.  Many  missionaries  forbid  the 
retention  and  use  of  caste  names  among  Indian 
Christians.  It  may  well  be  asked  whether 
Christianity  has  any  right  to  obliterate  family 
traditions  and  that  self-respect  which  is  in 
itself  a  virtue  and  an  inspiration.  "  Why  should 
not  a  baptized  Brahmin  hand  down  the  fact 
of  noble  ancestry  and  pure  blood  in  a  family 
name    to    his     Christian    descendants?"     It    is 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  55 

surely  a  doubtful  procedure  to  press  inter- 
marriage, or  even  inter-dining,  between  people 
of  different  caste.  Even  in  the  West  inter- 
dining  between  the  castle  and  the  cottage  is 
not  even  dreamed  of.  Matters  such  as  these 
are  yet  to  be  adjusted. 

There  is  in  China  the  question  of  ancestor 
worship,  deep-rooted  with  the  sanction  of 
long  centuries  ;  must  the  attitude  of  the  Church 
be  one  of  utter  and  uncompromising  hostility  ? 
All  over  the  world  where  the  new  ferment 
of  Christianity  sets  working  amid  humanity, 
questions  such  as  these  at  once  knock  at  the 
Church's  door  demanding  an  answer.  Formerly 
the  Church's  answer  was  an  uncompromising 
negative.  But  in  these  days  we  are  rather 
tired  of  negations.  Every  system  is  not  neces- 
sarily false  because  we  do  not  possess  it.  When 
a  system  has  survived  for  ages,  it  has  survived 
not  because  it  was  false  but  bacause  it  had 
some  great  truth  at  the  root  of  it.  The  central 
fact  of  Christianity  is  the  realisation  that 
everywhere  is  some  gleam  of  that  light 
which  lighteneth  every  man,  but  which  shone 
resplendent  in  One.  So  even  of  caste  and 
ancestor-worship.     The   missionary  in   our  day 


56  THE  PROBLEMS  OF 

must  ask  what  is  the  truth  in  it.  We  know 
to-day  the  great  power  of  heredity,  the  great 
importance  of  keeping  the  race  pure — and  even 
in  caste  we  can  see  a  seminal  truth.  But  the 
problem  is,  how  far  the  Church  can  recognise 
that  seminal  truth  in  consonance  with  the  great 
truth — the  core  of  its  teaching — the  brotherhood 
of  man.  These  are  but  some  of  the  problems 
which  confront  Christianity  when  it  comes  face 
to  face  with  heathenism. 

It  is  not  only  in  these  matters  that  the 
modern  missionary  has  altered  his  standpoint. 
The  whole  relation  of  the  Western  Churches  to 
the  East  has  been  revolutionised.  When  the 
era  of  missions  dawned  the  idea  seemed  to  be 
to  deport  to  the  East  the  Christian  Church  as 
it  existed  in  the  West.  We  now  realise  the 
futility  of  this.  For  Christianity  in  the  form 
we  possess  it  is  not  the  Christianity  that  will 
commend  itself  to  the  East.  It  was  in  the  East 
that  Christianity  sprang.  In  Galilee  a  Teacher 
taught  a  handful  of  peasants  in  vivid  meta- 
phors, in  the  guise  of  simple  stories,  the  great 
truth  that  there  was  one  Father,  and  that  all 
men  were  brothers.  But  the  cold,  unimagi- 
native Western  minds  made    these   metaphors 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  57 

the  basis  of  creeds  and  dogmas  and  legal 
systems.  And  this  huge  system  of  law  and 
doctrine  they  began  to  send  again  to  the  East 
in  the  name  of  Christianity.  The  problem 
now  is  this — whether  this  Christianity  is  worth 
exporting  to  the  East  ?  Christianity  arose  as 
an  Oriental  religion,  and  must  it  not  again 
be  Orientalised  ere  it  can  sweep  through  Asia 
with  its  vitalising  breath  ?  We  are  learning 
now  that  it  is  not  we  of  the  West  who  will 
Christianise  the  Orient — it  is  the  native  Church 
itself  that  must  do  it.  We  have  not  the  key 
to  that  life  lived  in  the  plains  of  India. 
We  can  only  bring  the  seed  ;  it  is  the  native 
Church  itself  that  must  sow  it  broadcast  over 
the  land. 

From  this  has  sprung  a  wholly  altered  relation 
of  the  Western  Churches  to  the  East.  At  first 
the  native  Church  was  wholly  dependent  on 
the  West.  Now  the  aim  is  to  train  up  the 
native  Church  to  be  as  soon  as  possible  self- 
supporting  and  self-acting.  "  The  aim  of  all 
Western  Mission  Work,"  declared  an  Indian 
delegate  to  the  World  Missionary  Conference, 
"  should  be  to  make  itself  unnecessary."  "  We 
open    the    doorway,"    said    another,    "and    we 


58  THE  PROBLEMS   OF 

have  to  see  that  we  get  out  of  it  as  speedily 
as  possible."  Hitherto  the  Western  Missionaries 
have  stood  in  the  doorway  and  prevented  the 
egress  of  the  influence  of  the  native  Christians 
on  their  own  race.  Doubtless  the  Missionaries 
distrusted  the  capacity  and  wisdom  of  the 
infant  Church.  But  it  is  only  by  experience 
that  capacity  and  wisdom  come.  "It  was," 
declared  Dr.  Hodgkin,  of  China,  "  a  very 
young  and  a  very  inexperienced  Church  to 
which  the  Holy  Ghost  said,  '  Separate  Me 
Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  whereunto 
I  have  called  them.' "  But  upon  the  native 
Church  this  policy  of  the  Western  Church  has 
acted  as  a  withering  blight.  Kept  in  tutelage, 
it  did  not  acquire  that  confidence  in  itself 
which  must  precede  initiative.  Taught  the 
dogmas  of  the  West,  it  was  not  encouraged 
to  think  out  for  itself  the  great  truths  of 
Christianity.  So  far  it  has  produced  no 
original  thought  ;  kept  in  leading  strings,  it 
has  set  forth  on  no  voyage  of  conquest  or 
discovery.  The  Western  Church  has  feared 
lest,  its  control  being  removed,  indigenous 
Churches  might  grow  up  in  the  East  different 
and  separated  in  sympathy  from  the  Churches 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  59 

in  the  West.  This  was  the  matter  which 
Bishop  Gore  emphasised  when  he  declared 
that  continuous  life  depended  on  continuous 
principles,  and  that  the  Church  had  to  insist 
on  the  principles  which  are  eternal.  This  is 
doubtless  true.  But  surely  God  can  be  trusted 
with  the  future  of  His  own  Church.  The 
native  Church  may  make  mistakes,  but  have 
not  the  Churches  in  the  West  made  mistakes  ? 
The  promise  of  the  Church  being  guided  by 
the  Holy  Ghost  into  all  the  truth  is  not  a 
promise  to  the  white  men  and  the  Western 
Church  alone.  All  that  the  Western  Church 
can  do  is,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Campbell  Gibson, 
"  to  impress  on  the  Eastern  Churches  the 
great  affirmations  of  divine  truth  which  are 
the  essence  of  the  Church  and  of  the  spiritual 
life."  This  the  Western  Church  has  done,  and 
will  continue  to  do.  If  the  East  is  to  be  won 
for  Christianity,  it  can  only  be  won  by  the 
native  Church — by  men  who  can  think  the 
thoughts,  feel  the  emotions,  and  see  the  things 
which  are  only  visible  to  the  Eastern  eye. 
The  aim  of  the  modern  missionary  is  not, 
then,  to  reproduce  in  the  East  the  Church  of 
the   West  ;    his   aim   is   to   raise    up   a   Church 


60  THE  PROBLEMS  OF 

which  in  time  will  produce  its  own  St.  Paul, 
who  will  speak  to  the  East  the  language  of 
the  East — and  then  the  day  of  conquest  will 
come. 

It  is  now  abundantly  manifest  also  that  it 
is  not  through  acting  upon  individuals  only, 
but  acting  through  mass  movements,  that 
Christianity  can  hope  to  advance  with  any 
rapidity.  These  mass  movements  occur  when 
whole  communities  at  one  time  turn  towards 
Christianity.  They  have  occurred  in  many 
parts  of  India  and  China,  and  notably  in 
Korea.  Many  missionaries  look  with  suspicion 
on  these  movements.  When  an  entire  clan 
and  an  entire  village  suddenly  desire  to  adopt 
Christianity,  their  motives  are  open  to  sus- 
picion. It  is  often  the  yearning  for  escape 
from  some  misery.  It  is  a  movement  towards 
material  and  social  betterment.  But  surely 
that  is  no  ignoble  desire.  Every  step  upwards 
begins  on  an  elementary  plane.  When  the 
level  is  once  changed  higher  levels  are  attain- 
able. "  Hundreds  of  our  best  people,"  writes 
a  missionary,  "  were  swept  in  on  the  tide  of 
the  mass  movement,  who,  as  individuals,  would 
hardly  have   been   sought   or   reached    by  any 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  61 

other  method."  "  Nineteen-twentieths  of  our 
Christians,"  writes  another,  "are  the  result  of 
mass  movements.  Some  fall  away,  more  re- 
main, and  the  general  result  has  been  most 
encouraging  ;  we  have  many  examples  of  true 
piety  and  loyal  obedience  to  Christ  among 
those  who  came  to  us  at  first  from  mixed 
motives."  Whatever  may  have  been  the  motive 
of  the  clan  or  village  when  it  moved  in  a 
mass,  the  third  and  fourth  generation,  trained 
and  taught,  have  left  that  motive  far  hehind. 
The  policy  of  diffusion  over  the  mass  rather 
than  concentration  on  the  individual  is  un- 
doubtedly the  policy  of  the  future.  It  was 
the  policy  by  which  Christianity  won  its  vic- 
tories at  the  first.  It  was  by  movement  in 
mass  that  Scotland  was  won  for  Christianity 
by  St.  Columba.  With  King  Brude  his  clan 
moved  in  a  mass,  and  Columba  received  them. 
And  yet  there  are  modern  missionaries  who 
look  askance  at  movements  in  the  mass. 
They  must  have  a  high  individual  standard 
ere  admission  to  the  Church  be  granted. 
Terrified  lest  the  Church  should  be  swamped 
by  a  flood  of  "  baptized  heathenism, "  they 
often   go   to   the   opposite   extreme.      It  is  re- 


62  THE  PROBLEMS   OF 

corded  that  a  missionary  who  laboured  with 
devotion  for  twenty  years  in  a  certain  town 
was  so  scrupulous  that  he  only  twice  ventured 
to  baptize  an  inquirer.  In  both  cases  he 
found  himself  grievously  deceived.  During  the 
same  years  other  men  working  by  his  side, 
by  other  methods,  baptized  many  hundreds 
of  converts,  and  built  up  a  strong  Christian 
Church.  Missionaries  too  often  forget  the 
weary  centuries  it  has  taken  to  produce  the 
present  standard  in  the  West,  and  how  poor  a 
thing  that  standard  is  even  after  all  these 
centuries,  and  they  expect  the  standard  of  the 
West  without  the  Christian  heredity  of  cen- 
turies which  lies  behind  the  West.  Evolution 
marches  with  very  slow  and  tardy  steps.  "A 
mass  movement,"  writes  a  missionary,  "is  an 
open  door,  and  the  Church  should  press  through 
it  with  all  her  might."  That  is  what  the 
Church  did  in  the  days  of  St.  Columba  ;  it  is 
what  the  Church  must  still  do.  In  India 
there  are  fifty  millions  of  outcasts  ready  and 
willing  to  embrace  Christianity.  The  sad  thing 
is  that  Christianity  seems  unable  to  supply 
the  requisite  evangelists  and  teachers.  It  is 
by  demonstrating  to  the  full,  what  has  already 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  63 

been  demonstrated  in  a  measure,  that  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ  can  inspire  that  vast 
mass  of  degraded  humanity  with  self-respect, 
can  raise  up  to  higher  levels  of  thought  and 
ideal,  can  transform  its  mud  into  gold ;  that 
Christianity  will  prove  to  the  world  its  power 
to  deliver  and  to  save. 

There  is  one  sad  note  that  occurs  over  and 
again  in  this  report — it  is  this.  The  early 
missions  committed  the  mistake  of  teaching 
through  English.  Instead  of  bringing  Christi- 
anity to  the  children  in  the  schools  through 
their  own  language,  they  brought  it  through 
the  English  language,  which  they  laboriously 
taught.  Thus  the  native  Church  has  so  far 
produced  no  literature  of  its  own.  But  what 
is  worse  is  that  the  work  of  the  mission- 
aries is  so  often  hampered  and  nullified  by 
the  Atheistical  and  Materialistic  literature 
which  the  West  pours  into  the  East.  From 
Japan  comes  the  Atheistical  teaching  of  Europe 
pouring  into  the  Christian  spheres  in  China ! 
When  the  West  has  left  these  pamphlets  far 
behind,  they  do  their  baneful  work  in  the 
unknowing  East.  And  one  thinks  of  Islam — 
every  trader  a  propagandist;   and   one  thinks 


64  THE  PROBLEMS   OF 

of  Christianity,  with  its  labours  so  often 
nullified  by  those  reared  within  its  pale,  and 
who  have  received  through  it  the  best  in 
life — and  one  realises  that  the  greatest  obstacle 
to  the  triumph  of  Christianity  is  not  the  enemy 
without,  but  the  enemy  within.  The  Moham- 
medan does  not  pride  himself  on  counteracting 
the  progress  of  Islam — the  Christian  trader 
and  civilian  too  often  does.  "The  missionary 
is  hampered, "  wrote  R.  L.  Stevenson  from 
Samoa,  "  he  is  restricted,  he  is  negated  by 
the  attitude  of  his  fellow-whites,  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  his  fellow-Christians  in  the 
same  island."  The  teaching  of  Christianity 
is  sore  let  and  hindered  in  the  mission-fields 
by  the  low  lives  of  men  who  live  under  its 
name.  "You  come  to  us  with  your  religion," 
says  the  Asiatic  and  the  African ;  "  you  degrade 
our  people  with  drink;  you  scorn  our  religion, 
in  many  points  like  your  own  ;  and  then  you 
wonder  why  Christianity  makes  such  slow 
progress  amongst  us.  I  will  tell  you :  it  is 
because  you  are  not  like  your  Christ."  ,  Thus 
one  of  the  grievous  problems  facing  the  infant 
Church  in  the  midst  of  heathendom  is  how 
best     to     protect    itself    against    the    debasing 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  65 

influence  of  degraded  men,  nominally  Christians, 
and  against  the  attacks  of  those  who,  reared 
in  the  bosom  of  Christianity,  yet  would  fain 
destroy  it. 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  the 
standard  by  which  the  infant  Christian  Church 
in  the  midst  of  heathenism  is  to  be  judged  is 
not  the  standard  to  which  the  Christians  in 
the  West  have  attained  after  the  growth  of 
a  thousand  years.  There  are  those  who, 
seeing  the  imperfections  and  feebleness  of 
the  converts,  and  lacking  the  imagination 
which  in  the  blade  beholds  the  yellow  har- 
vest, are  loud-voiced  in  condemning  missions. 
After  many  generations  Christianity  has  in 
the  West  formed  "beaten  tracks  of  respecta- 
bility "  ;  and  along  these  a  multitude  who  reject 
the  Mastership  of  Christ  are  impelled  to  walk 
by  the  forces  which  pulsate  in  the  very 
atmosphere  they  breathe.  They  owe  the 
decency  and  security  of  their  lives  to  the 
very  Christ  whom  they  spurn.  And  these, 
looking  at  the  mission-field,  demand  of  the 
converts  of  yesterday  a  character  which  they 
themselves  owe  to  the  Christianity  of  many 
centuries.     Nowhere    is   the   precept   of   Christ, 

Won  for  Christ.  Q 


66  THE  PROBLEMS   OF 

"  Judge  not,"  more  requisite  than  in  dealing 
with  the  infant  Christian  Church  in  non- 
Christian  lands.  The  Christian  converts  must 
be  judged,  not  in  contrast  with  the  Christians 
of  the  West,  but  in  contrast  with  the  heathen- 
ism from  which  they  have  sprung.  The  atmo- 
sphere surrounding  the  Christian  converts  is 
the  atmosphere  of  that  heathen  society  in 
which  the  Europeans  cannot  bear  that  their 
children  should  grow  up.  All  that  has  to  be 
taken  into  account.  It  was  thus  that  Origen 
judged  the  early  Christians  of  his  days : 
"  Compared  with  contemporary  pagans,  the 
disciples  of  Christ  shine  like  stars  in  the  firma- 
ment." Against  the  background  of  heathenism, 
with  its  foul  speech,  its  unspeakable  licen- 
tiousness, its  polygamy,  and  its  child-murder, 
its  bondage  to  terror  and  its  indifference  to 
life,  its  falsehood  and  dishonesty,  let  the 
converts  to  Christianity  be  seen,  with  the 
dawn  of  the  Christian  virtues  in  their  souls, 
with  the  speech  growing  clean,  with  the  mind 
being  illumined,  with  the  heart  being  softened 
by  love  and  kindness,  with  the  family  life 
being  cleansed,  with  meekness  and  gentleness 
and  self-sacrifice  beginning  their  perfect  work, 


THE  INFANT  CHURCH  67 

and  then  they  too,  like  the  Christians  of  old 
whom  Origen  saw,  will  shine  before  the  eye 
like  stars  in  the  firmament.  We  must  look 
at  the  infant  Church  with  the  calm  eyes 
which  behold,  not  the  present  but  the  future 
which  shall  be.  Now  is  the  sowing-time — 
anon  shall  be  the  harvest.  It  took  aeons  to 
pile  up  the  rocks  and  rear  the  hills  and 
establish  the  solid  earth ;  we  must  not  wonder 
that  the  Spirit  of  God,  working  in  the 
tenderest  of  all  things  —  souls  —  should  need 
centuries  for  His  perfect  work.  If  the  con- 
verts to  Christianity  must  be  judged,  let  them 
be  judged  by  Christians  who  have  vision  and 
imagination.  That  they  should  be  judged 
and  condemned  by  those  who  are  not  them- 
selves Christians  is  futile.  For  it  is  the 
right  of  every  man  that  he  should  be  judged 
by  his  peers. 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 


The  illiterate  mass — Mistaken  policy  in  India — Lord 
Macaulay — Importance  of  the  vernacular — How  Christi- 
anity became  indigenous  at  the  first — Only  through  the 
vernacular  can  it  become  indigenous  now — Importance 
of  Christian  colleges  as  means  of  reaching  the  Hindus — 
The  two  alternatives. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF   EDUCATION 

rn  HE  Commission  of  the  World  Missionary 
-*"■  Conference  on  Education  in  relation  to 
the  Christianisation  of  national  life,  which 
had  Bishop  Gore,  of  Birmingham,  for  its 
chairman,  has  rendered  the  most  valuable 
service  to  the  missionary  expansion  of 
Christianity.  There  is  nothing  like  it  in  the 
literature  of  missions.  Professor  Sadler,  one 
of  the  greatest  authorities  on  the  science  of 
education,  describes  it  as  "the  first  serious 
attempt  to  arrive  at  a  concerted  policy  in  the 
field  of  Christian  education."  It  has  explored 
the  whole  field  of  missionary  enterprise,  and 
presents  facts  which  are  of  vital  import  to 
the  work  of  Christianising  the  world.  The 
problem  of  education  is  the  greatest  problem 
facing     the     Church     in     heathen     lands.      To 

71 


72       THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

realise  its  vastness  one  has  only  to  think  that 
out  of  a  population  of  293,000,000  in  India, 
277,000,000  are  illiterate,  or,  to  put  it  otherwise, 
out  of  34,000,000  young  people  of  school  age, 
only  6,000,000  have  any  educational  facilities. 
Ignorance  is  the  handmaid  of  superstition, 
and  that  vast  mass  of  illiteracy  is  truly 
appalling.  But  even  the  children  of  the 
Christian  Church  are  left  also  in  large 
measure  uneducated,  for  out  of  400,000 
Christian  children  in  India,  only  168,000,  or 
45  per  cent.,  are  in  school.  Thus,  there  is 
not  only  the  overwhelming  mass  of  illiterate 
heathenism,  but  there  is  actually  an  ignorant 
Christian  Church  growing  up  in  India.  If 
these  facts  are  not  enough  to  make  us  realise 
the  extent  of  the  educational  problem,  there 
is  this  further  fact  that,  out  of  1,000  women, 
only  seven  can  read  or  write.  When,  sixty 
years  ago,  the  first  girls'  school  was  opened 
in  South  India,  the  people  exclaimed,  "  From 
the  beginning  of  the  world  it  has  never  been 
known  that  a  woman  could  read."  But  it  is 
the  women  who  make  the  home,  and  to  be 
effective  the  light  must  shine  through  the  wife 
and  the  mother.     It  is  through  the  schools  that 


THE  PROBLEM   OF  EDUCATION       73 

Christianity  has  rendered  its  most  effective 
work.  And  the  evangelising  agencies,  such  as 
the  Salvation  Army,  which  have  neglected  the 
school,  have  failed  to  make  an  impression  on 
India. 

But  the  effort  that  has  been  put  forth  by 
the  Christian  Church  on  behalf  of  education 
has  not  so  far  borne  commensurate  fruit.  The 
reason  of  that  is  that  the  education  which 
the  Church  imparted  has  been  conducted  on 
wrong  lines.  So  long  ago  as  1835  a  far-reach- 
ing decision  was  arrived  at  by  the  Indian 
Educational  Committee,  when,  by  the  cast- 
ing vote  of  Lord  Macaulay,  it  was  decreed 
that  the  medium  of  instruction  in  the  colleges 
of  India  should  be  English  and  not  Sanscrit 
or  Arabic.  This  was  the  period  of  which 
Lord  Curzon  declared  that  the  withering 
blight  of  Macaulay's  rhetoric  passed  over  the 
field  of  education  in  India.  Neither  Sanscrit 
nor  Arabic  was  the  vernacular  of  India  any 
more  than  Latin  that  of  England  ;  but  the 
lead  thus  given  had  the  effect  that  English 
became  the  medium  in  the  higher  mission 
schools  for  the  instruction  of  the  students. 
In     a     sense     this     was     perhaps     inevitable. 


74       THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

"Whosoever  knows  that  language,"  declared 
Macaulay,  "  has  ready  access  to  all  the  vast 
intellectual  wealth  which  all  the  wisest 
nations  of  the  earth  have  created  and  stored 
in  the  course  of  ninety  generations."  But  the 
result  of  that  access  has  not  been  what 
Macaulay  expected,  or  what  the  missionaries 
expected.  Instead  of  training  up  leaders  for 
the  native  Church  in  India,  the  mission 
schools  have  "made  the  students  in  thought 
and  habits  almost  foreigners,  and  largely  out 
of  touch  with  native  thought  and  feeling." 
"  Students,"  wrote  a  missionary  from  Ceylon, 
"  are  prepared  for  the  London  B.A.  The 
vernaculars  are  ignored  .  .  .  and  youths  whose 
parents  talk  an  Eastern  tongue,  and  who 
themselves  rarely  think  in  any  other,  are 
crammed,  repeating  English,  Latin,  Greek,  or 
French  .  .  .  and  do  nothing  for  their  own 
people.  They  cannot  write  to  their  parents 
in  their  own  tongue,  nor  read  letters  sent  to 
them."  This  isolation  to  which  the  education 
of  the  mission  schools  dooms  the  young  Indian 
is  terrible — he  cannot  become  of  the  West, 
and  he  is  cut  off  from  the  East.  "  As  educa- 
tion is  conducted  at  present,"  writes  an  Indian 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION       75 

gentleman,  "  our  girls  seem  to  have  been  made 
for  studying  English  and  passing  University 
examinations.  The  poor  girls  are  bribed  with 
scholarships  ...  to  continue  their  studies  until 
they  lose  all  their  vitality.  ...  It  is  forgotten 
that  the  condition  of  society  is  such  that 
girls,  in  spite  of  University  degrees,  will  not 
be  allowed  after  marriage  to  work  indepen- 
dently of  the  husband.  More  attention  ought 
to  be  paid  to  secure  for  our  girls  the  kind  of 
education  they  really  stand  in  need  of."  Truly 
the  rhetoric  of  Macaulay  has  produced  a 
withering  blight.  Education  has  been  merely 
exercising  the  memory,  not  the  thinking 
faculty.  The  result  has  been  that  the  native 
Christian  Church  is  exotic,  and  all  the  mis- 
sionary activity  of  a  century  has  failed  to 
produce  a  native  Church  "Christian  in  con- 
viction and  indigenous  in  thought."  The 
ludicrous  result  has  been  that  one  can  hear 
an  educated  Indian  often  speak  with  a  broad 
Aberdonian  accent,  acquired  from  his  Pro- 
fessor in  the  Scottish  College — but  that  is  the 
most  evident  result  of  his  training  !  To  this 
it  is  not  sufficient  answer  to  say  that  the 
mission  schools  have  supplied  what  the  Indian 


76       THE   PKOBLEM   OF  EDUCATION 

parents  want.  They  desire  an  English  train- 
ing for  their  children,  but  they  desire  it 
because  along  that  line  the  gratifying  of 
ambition  lies — the  securing  of  commercial 
and  civil  posts.  For  the  Church  does  not 
labour  to  gratify  the  worldly  ambitions  of 
the  Indian  ;  its  aim  is  to  lay  the  foundations 
of  an  indigenous  Church  of  India  ;  and  if  its 
methods  fail  to  produce  that,  then  the  failure 
is  grievous  indeed.  And  so  far  the  mission 
schools  have  failed  in  that.  It  is  not  through 
the  foreign  tongue  that  a  path  is  won  to  the 
heart  of  humanity.  There  are  stretches  of 
country  in  Scotland  where,  if  the  preacher 
goes  to  the  people  with  the  English  tongue, 
they  are  as  the  rock  and  he  as  the  storm  that 
beats  vainly  against  it.  But  let  him  go  to 
them  with  their  mother-tongue  old  and  dear 
— Gaelic — and  they  are  as  the  field  of  corn  and 
he  the  breeze  that  plays  upon  it.  East  or 
West,  humanity  is  the  same.  The  deep  things 
of  life  only  come  home  to  the  heart  and  soul 
through  the  mother-tongue.  Only  through 
the  vernacular  can  the  heart  of  India  be  won 
for  Christ.  So  long  as  Christianity  is  in  India 
associated   with    English,    it   is    only   the    reli- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION       77 

gion    of    the    foreigners — a    puny    and    feeble 
exotic. 

The  great  problem  facing  the  Church  is  how 
to  train  up  the  preachers  and  leaders  of  the 
native  Church  so  that  Christianity  may  no 
longer  appear  to  the  people  as  a  foreign 
import  pertaining  to  the  conquering  race.  A 
very  valuable  section  of  the  report  of  the 
Commission  on  Education  draws  an  interest- 
ing parallel  between  the  way  in  which  Chris- 
tianity became  indigenous  in  the  various 
provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  early 
centuries  and  the  way  in  which  expansion  is 
now  sought.  Then  Christianity  became  in- 
digenous at  once  ;  and  Ephesus,  Alexandria, 
Rome,  Africa,  settled  down  as  Christian  com- 
munities, developing  their  special  character 
as  Alexandrian,  Roman,  African,  and  later  as 
Celtic  and  Germanic  and  Anglo-Saxon  Chris- 
tianity. In  that  period  there  seemed  no  risk 
of  Christianity  becoming  exotic  in  any  dis- 
trict. This  was  owing  to  the  fact  that  Chris- 
tianity came  into  an  Empire  which  was 
already  furnished  with  schools,  so  that  Chris- 
tians and  non-Christians  shared  a  common 
education.       Schools     were     everywhere,     and 


78       THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

Christianity  used  no  effort  to  start  schools  of 
its  own  for  secular  education.  But  now  in 
India,  no  sooner  does  the  process  of  education 
begin  than  thereby  the  Christian  school  begins 
the  process  of  separating  its  scholars  from  the 
illiterate  community  whence  they  spring  and 
from  the  social  life  of  their  own  race.  But 
there  are  some  parts  of  heathenism  where 
the  conditions  of  the  ancient  Roman  Empire 
are  now  reproduced. 

In  Japan  education  is  universal,  and  the 
percentage  of  children  without  schools  is  less 
than  in  Great  Britain.  There  Christians  and 
non-Christians  receive  the  same  education,  and 
the  danger  of  Christians  becoming  exotic  is 
averted.  In  China  also  a  national  system 
of  education  is  being  established.  But  an 
edict  has  recently  been  issued  exalting  Con- 
fucius to  the  level  of  "heaven  and  earth,"  and 
requiring  teachers  and  students  to  do  reverence 
to  his  tablet.  To  this  Christians  object  as 
idolatrous,  and  it  forms  a  barrier  against  the 
use  of  the  national  schools  by  Christian 
children.  But  doubtless  this  will  be  overcome. 
The  Chinese  ideal  of  Christianity  is  that  the 
Christian  converts,  with  the  wives  and  children, 


THE   PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION       79 

should  continue  to  share  the  social  life  of 
their  own  race,  and  that  each  Church  should 
develop  its  own  local  character  and  colour. 
Thus  did  Christianity  spread  at  the  first;  and 
thus  only  can  "  the  glory  and  the  honour  of 
all  nations "  be  brought  within  the  circle  of 
the  Holy  City.  But  the  method  of  education 
which  the  Church  has  so  far  been  compelled 
to  adopt  has  not  in  this  direction  been  suc- 
cessful. Warneck,  speaking  to  Mr.  J.  R.  Mott 
on  the  true  missionary  method,  said,  "You 
men  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  act  as  if  the 
Lord  on  the  Mount  of  Ascension  had  com- 
manded His  disciples,  '  Go  ye  into  all  the 
world  and  teach  the  English  language  to 
every  creature.' "  Beneath  the  geniality  there 
is  a  biting  truth.  Christianity  has  thus  come 
in  foreign  garb,  through  a  foreign  language, 
and  the  result  is  that,  so  far  as  the  Church  is 
concerned,  the  deep  and  subtle  powers  of  the 
Indians  for  meditation  and  devotion,  their 
great  ascetic  instincts — the  qualities  which 
make  the  Indian  thinkers  appear  as  "  God- 
intoxicated" — these  are  all  outside  of  Chris- 
tianity. By  the  Hindu  the  Indian  Christian 
Church  is    still   regarded   as   altogether  alien — 


80   THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

so  says  Rev.  Dr.  William  Miller,  the  highest 
authority  on  Indian  missions.  When  the  true 
aim  of  missions  is  considered — the  building  up 
of  an  indigenous  Christianity — then  nothing 
more  pitiful  can  be  conceived  than  this,  taken 
as  an  example,  that  the  native  candidates  for 
ordination  in  the  Anglican  communion  should 
have,  as  they  now  have,  to  instruct  them- 
selves and  be  examined  in  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles — articles  full  of  Western  controversies. 
Well  might  Bishop  Gore  raise  indignant  hands 
to  heaven  as  he  denounced  the  folly  of  teaching 
the  native  evangelists  of  India  these  Western 
documents  that  breathe,  not  the  atmosphere 
of  Christian  love  but  that  of  bitter  and  out- 
worn controversies.  It  is  truly  unspeakable 
folly  to  introduce  to  the  East  the  language  of 
Western  strife,  and  to  forget  that  the  main  aim 
of  missions  is  the  presenting  of  Christianity  in 
the  form  best  suited  to  the  Oriental  spirit. 

It  is  only  through  the  power  of  education 
that  Christianity  can  solve  the  difficulties  which 
now  harass  it.  One  of  these  is  the  difficulty 
of  raising  up  leaders  in  the  native  Church 
capable  of  directing  its  energies  and  shaping 
its  policies.     So  far  the  native  Church  has  been 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION       81 

sterile ;  it  has  depended  on  the  West  for 
leadership.  Lord  William  Cecil  emphasised  the 
remedy  for  this  :  get  the  best  men  and  give 
them  the  best  education.  There  was  only  one 
thing  to  do — educate !  It  is  futile  for  Chris- 
tianity to  commend  itself  in  China  unless  it 
appeals  to  the  intellectual  life  of  China.  From 
the  past  China  has  turned  its  face  to  the 
future,  and  in  the  seething  ferment  of  its  new 
life  its  one  cry  is  for  education.  Christianity 
has  to  study  how  it  can  meet  that  cry ;  it  has 
to  discover  the  best  method  by  which  it  can 
knit  the  intellectual  training  to  the  spiritual 
training,  and  both  these  to  the  industrial  train- 
ing. And  in  India  the  only  way  by  which 
Christianity  can  gain  access  to  the  millions 
which  are  shut  in  by  caste,  behind  the  barriers 
of  the  inveterate  prejudice  of  many  centuries, 
is  by  education. 

There  is  to-day  a  tendency  to  depreciate 
the  work  of  the  great  missionary  colleges 
which  seek  to  leaven  the  Hindus  with  the 
inspiration  of  Christian  ideals.  And  so  far 
as  these  colleges  have,  by  teaching  a  foreign 
language  and  a  foreign  literature,  alienated 
the     educated    Hindus     from    the    sympathies 

Won  for  Christ.  <J 


82       THE   PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

of  their  own  race,  the  criticism  is  just.  But 
still  it  remains  true,  as  Principal  Miller  has 
so  clearly  demonstrated,  that  it  is  unsafe  to 
rely  on  the  existing  Indian  Church  for  the 
leavening  of  the  vast  mass  of  the  Indian 
people.  The  process  of  leavening  must  not  only 
work  upward  from  the  pariah  and  the  out- 
casts, it  must  also  work  downward  from  the 
ruling  classes.  Were  the  United  States  of 
America  heathen,  it  would  he  hopeless  to  rely 
on  a  negro  Church  for  the  permeating  of  the 
ruling  race  with  the  Christian  ideal.  It  is 
equally  hopeless,  says  Principal  Miller,  to  rely 
on  the  Indian  Church,  as  yet  alien  and  outside 
caste,  for  the  Christianising  of  the  national 
life  of  India.  "  The  stream  of  Christian 
influence  rising  from  beneath  must  be  met  by 
a  similar  stream  descending  from  above,  so 
that  both  may  unite  to  prepare  for  the  com- 
plete Christianising  of  national  life  and  lead 
in  the  end  to  the  full  reception  of  the  gospel 
by  all  the  races" — thus  Principal  Miller.  If 
so  far  the  work  of  these  colleges  has  yielded 
few  converts,  yet  through  the  enlightenment 
they  have  brought,  "  the  crude  materialism  and 
agnosticism  of  a  generation    ago    has    largely 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  EDUCATION       83 

disappeared,  and  been  replaced  by  a  spiritual 
theism,  which,  though  it  calls  itself  Neo- 
Hinduism,  is  in  essence  distinctly  Christian." 
A  great  number  of  the  ruling  classes  in  India 
to-day,  when  speaking  of  their  ideas  and  aims, 
admit  frankly  that  "the  great  influence  in 
their  lives  was  the  teaching  they  had  received 
in  the  Christian  colleges,  and  in  the  inspira- 
tion that  had  come  from  the  example  of  the 
Christian  professors."  And  caste  has  this 
advantage,  that  any  influence  which  per- 
meates one  part  of  it,  speedily  permeates 
through  the  mass. 

An  alarming  situation  has  recently  arisen 
on  the  field  of  education  in  India,  owing  to 
the  policy  adopted  by  the  Imperial  Govern- 
ment. Hitherto  the  Christian  colleges  were 
enabled  to  do  their  great  work  through  the 
system  of  grants-in-aid.  But  now  the  aim  of 
the  Government  seems  to  be  to  develop  its 
own  colleges,  in  which  the  whole  system  of 
education  is  purely  secular.  These  colleges, 
with  the  whole  wealth  of  the  imperial 
resources  behind  them,  are  outclassing  the 
Christian  colleges,  and  putting  them  in  the 
background.      The    question    has    thus    arisen 


84   THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION 

whether  "  the  dominating  influence  in  the 
future  history  of  three  hundred  millions  of 
the  human  race  shall  be  religious  on  the  one 
hand,  or  purely  secular  and  materialistic  on 
the  other."  "  If  the  Government  pursue  the 
present  retrograde  policy,"  says  Principal 
Miller,  "  one  of  two  results  is  bound  to  follow. 
On  the  one  hand,  all  sense  of  everything  that 
does  not  belong  to  the  present  material  world 
may  perish  out  of  the  national  life.  On  the 
other  hand,  India  may  learn  to  hate  a  Govern- 
ment whose  educational  efforts  will  in  process 
of  time  be  recognised  as  having  resulted  in 
the  destruction  of  all  that  has  hitherto  been 
noble  and  inspiring  in  her  story.  Either  of 
these  alternatives  will  be  fraught  with  ruin." 
There  is  truly  herein  a  loud  call  to  the 
Christian  Church  to  endeavour  to  save  the 
Government  of  India  from  itself.  To  teach 
the  science  of  the  West  and  the  knowledge 
of  the  West  to  India  without  bringing  also 
to  bear  the  spiritual  forces  and  the  moral 
restraints  which  make  that  science  and  that 
knowledge  instruments  of  righteousness,  is  to 
confer  on  India  not  a  blessing,  but  a  curse. 
Secular   education   alone    has    failed   to   kindle 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  EDUCATION       85 

a  moral  ideal  and  to  touch  the  springs  of 
conduct.  In  India  it  has  been  a  conspicuous 
failure. 

The  one  aim  of  Christian  education,  whether 
it  works  from  above  or  from  below,  is  so 
to  teach  that  Christianity  shall  become  in- 
digenous and  take  its  true  place  in  the  life 
of  a  nation,  and  fulfil  its  true  purpose,  which 
is  not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil.  That  was  the 
purpose  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity — it 
is  His  purpose  still.  An  exotic  Church  will 
remain  outside  caste,  and  so  endeavour  to 
erect  a  new  civilisation  from  the  beginning ;  an 
indigenous  Church  will  seek  its  reform.  An 
exotic  Church  will  set  itself  to  exterminate 
the  worship  of  ancestors  in  China,  and  so  doing 
will  remain  exotic  for  ever ;  but  an  indigenous 
Church  will  remember  that  the  honouring  of 
father  and  mother  is  in  its  decalogue  the  only 
Commandment  with  promise,  and  that  the 
reverence  of  parents  while  living  and  of  their 
memories  when  dead  is  a  virtue  high  among 
virtues,  and  will  claim  it  as  the  "  testimony  of 
the  soul  naturally  Christian."  An  exotic  Chris- 
tianity will  in  heathen  lands  be  iconoclastic, 
tearing  down  the  old  and  substituting  the  new, 


86       THE  PROBLEM   OF  EDUCATION 

and  so  will  meet  with  bitter  opposition ;  but 
an  indigenous  Christianity,  honouring  the  past, 
exalting  the  good  in  its  teaching,  will  bring 
its  best  within  the  great  harmony  of  Christi- 
anity, and  thus  disarming  opposition,  will, 
without  a  shock,  transform  the  imperfect 
into   the   more   perfect. 

The  World  Missionary  Conference  will  then 
bring  home  afresh  to  the  Christian  Church  the 
realisation  of  the  true  method  of  presenting  and 
teaching  Christianity.  In  so  far  as  hitherto  that 
teaching  has  been  through  foreign  languages, 
it  has  in  a  great  measure  failed  of  its  purpose. 
The  triumphs  of  Christianity  have  been  through 
the  vernacular.  The  work  which  missions  have 
already  rendered,  teaching  the  children  through 
the  mother-tongue  in  elementary  schools,  can- 
not but  evoke  admiration.  Great  communities 
of  pariahs  and  aboriginals  have  been  gathered 
into  the  Christian  Church,  and  the  uplift 
which  these  experienced  has  disarmed  even 
hostile  opinion.  Of  this  native  opinion  is 
most  eloquent.  "I  am  a  Brahman  of  the 
Brahmans,"  writes  a  native  gentleman,  "  and 
belong  to  the  most  orthodox  school ;  and  I  am 
an  Indian   and    love    my  country,  and   I   must 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  EDUCATION       87 

confess  that  the  way  in  which  Christianity 
has  raised  the  pariahs  of  Madras  is  beyond 
all  praise,  and  puts  me  to  shame  as  a  Hindu." 
It  is  by  this  work  that  Christianity  will 
conquer  at  the   last. 


THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 


Necessity  for  thorough  preparation — Essential  that  an- 
guage  be  mastered — Lord  Cromer — A  ready-made  religion 
and  a  ready-made  civilisation  useless  —  Necessity  for 
general  knowledge,  and  insight  into  what  is  essential  to 
religion  —  Missionaries  unable  to  argue  with  Moham- 
medans— Character  the  great  power. 


VI 


THE  TRAINING   OF  MISSIONARIES 

"VTOTHING  can  be  of  more  vital  importance 
-*-^  to  the  cause  of  missions  than  the  due 
preparation  of  the  missionaries  for  the  work 
of  evangelising  the  world.  And  this  report 
makes  it  very  clear  that  the  onward  march 
of  the  Christian  army  has  been  sore  let  and 
hindered  because  the  officers  who  direct  it 
have  not  been  properly  trained  for  their 
duties.  No  man  is  sent  to  India  to  serve  the 
Empire  without  a  strenuous  course  of  special 
training  —  not  even  though  his  task  be  to 
superintend  forests  and  plant  trees !  But  too 
often  is  it  the  case  that  a  man  is  sent  to  the 
mission-field,  there  to  combat  ancient  religions 
entrenched  by  hoary  and  subtle  philosophies, 
without  having  been  specially  trained  for  this 
most   difficult   of  all   tasks.     When   one  thinks 

91 


92    THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 

of  the  diversity  of  races  and  civilisations  and 
religions  which  Christianity  has  to  face,  and 
how  each,  to  adequately  meet  its  demands, 
needs  special  knowledge  and  special  preparation 
on  the  part  of  the  missionaries,  one  realises 
how  great  this  problem  is — the  problem  of 
how  best  to  equip  the  missionary  for  his  task. 
The  wonder  is  that  Christianity,  though  its 
preachers  were  men  who  had  no  preparation 
for  this  special  duty  save  that  of  hearing  the 
call  to  preach  to  the  heathen  and  obeying 
that  call,  has  so  largely  prevailed.  And  if, 
through  the  impetus  of  the  World  Missionary 
Conference,  no  soldier  be  sent  to  serve  in  the 
Christian  army  without  being  fully  equipped 
for  his  task,  then  the  power  of  Christianity 
will  forthwith  most  mightily  prevail. 

The  first  requisite  of  a  missionary  is  that 
he  should  be  able  to  enter  into  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  those  to  whom  he  seeks  to 
present  the  message  of  Christianity.  And 
this  is  the  greatest  barrier  in  the  path  of  the 
missionary  dealing  with  a  race  to  whom  he 
is  an  enigma,  and  who  are  careful  to  hide 
their  real  thoughts  and  feelings  from  him.  A 
missionary  who   is  powerless  to  pass  over   the 


THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES    93 

barrier  separating    race    from   race,   unable  to 
project  himself    in     some     measure     into    the 
minds  and  hearts  of  the  natives,  must  ever  be 
a   hireling  and    a    day-labourer    in    the    great 
mission-field.     He  will  never  inspire  and  never 
lead.     And  to   achieve   this   first   essential  step 
on    which     all    the     rest     depends,    the    great 
means    is    to    master    the    language  in    which 
the  people  speak,  and  which  is  the  expression 
of  their  inner  thoughts.      To  realise  what  this 
means  we  have  only  to  think  of  those  stretches 
of  country  in    Scotland    in    which   a  minister 
who  can  only  speak  English  in  the  midst  of  a 
Gaelic-speaking  community  will  find  himself  for 
ever  an    alien    to    their   hearts— knocking  at  a 
door  to  which  he  has  not  the  key.     To  conquer 
the  East   one   must  first    master  the  language 
of  the  East.     When  one  thinks  of  India  alone, 
with    its    147    languages    and   its   innumerable 
dialects,  the  magnitude   of  this  problem  mani- 
fests itself.     Yet  it  is  here,  in  the  first  requisite 
step,  that  the  missionary  cause  has  so  frequently 
failed.      Missionaries,   owing  to    defective    pre- 
paration,   are     often     unable     to     master   the 
language   of    the    people.     They    are   prepared 
for  the    mission-fields   as   are   those  who  serve 


94    THE   TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 

in  the  ministry  of  the  Church  at  home,  and 
they  are  left  to  acquire  the  language  of  the 
people  when  they  go  to  the  East.  In  the 
midst  of  multifarious  duties,  at  the  hands  of 
native  teachers,  who  are  incapable  of  teaching, 
and  who  shrink  from  correcting  the  white 
man's  blunders,  they  are  left  to  acquire  the 
language  of  the  natives  as  they  best  can. 
The  result  often  is  that  they  never  fully 
master  it,  and  that  they  deliver  the  gospel 
through  a  language  they  have  imperfectly 
learned.  Let  a  congregation  in  London  be 
left  to  the  ministry  of  one  who  could  not 
speak  English  correctly,  and  amazement  at 
the  blundering  of  his  speech  would  be 
the  impression  that  would  efface  all  others. 
They  would  smile;  but  they  would  not  be 
illumined  or  enthused.  It  would  be  the  same 
with  an  imperfect  speaker  of  Gaelic  in  Skye, 
or  a  stumbling  speaker  of  Welsh  in  Wales ! 
And  yet  the  Churches  send  the  missionaries 
forth  to  the  heathen  without  having  first  seen 
to  it  that  they  can  speak  the  language  of 
the  heathen.  For  this  strange  omission  the 
Churches  have  accounted  by  saying  that  the 
missionary  could   more    readily  learn   the   Ian- 


THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES    95 

guage  on  the  spot,  in  the  midst  of  those  to 
whom  it  is  a  living  tongue.  But  the  weight 
of  the  testimony  is  all  the  other  way.  "I 
think  the  universal  testimony  of  all  those  in 
Egypt,  who  know  Arabic  well,"  declared  Lord 
Cromer,  "is  that  the  young  man  who  comes 
out  after  having  been  grounded  in  Arabic 
eventually  turns  out  a  very  much  better  public 
servant  than  the  man  who  merely  picks  up 
the  language  in  Egypt." 

The   report   of    the    Treasury   Committee   on 
the    organisation    of     Oriental     studies,     says: 
"Assuming   that    for   those    who    are   engaged 
...  in    the    East     a     knowledge     of    Oriental 
languages   is   essential,   we  are   convinced   that 
for  these  persons  it  will  be  to  their  advantage 
to  begin  their  studies  at   home.  .  .  .  The  Com- 
mittee  desire   to   call   special   attention   to   the 
fact  that  languages  like  Chinese  and  Japanese 
require     for    their     acquisition     aptitudes    not 
possessed  by  every  one,  and  that  it  is  perfectly 
possible  to   test  those   aptitudes   in  the  course 
of  a  year's  probationary  training  in  England, 
and  that  it  seems   wasteful   to   send  abroad  at 
the  public    expense,    without    probation,    men 
who  may  be  unsuited  to  the  service  to  which 


96    THE   TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 

they  are  appointed."  These  words  are  equally 
applicable  to  missionaries  as  to  civil  servants. 
The  vast  majority  of  missionaries  go  to  the 
East  ignorant  of  a  vernacular,  and  ignorant 
also  of  the  life,  the  history,  the  manners,  the 
customs,  the  laws  of  those  whom  they  set 
forth  to  enlighten.  No  man  can  discover 
these  things  by  intuition,  and  it  is  only  after 
many  blunders  and  through  bitter  disappoint- 
ments that  the  missionary  comes  at  last  to 
see  that  his  work  is  in  large  measure  fruitless 
because  he  has  not  been  properly  trained.  And 
the  strange  thing  is  that,  though  this  nation 
rules  more  of  the  Oriental  races  than  any 
other  country  in  the  world,  yet  there  is  not 
in  this  country  a  school  of  living  Oriental 
languages  in  which  those  who  are  to  serve  in 
the  East  can  learn  the  knowledge  of  the  East. 
It  is  practically  certain  that  at  an  early  date 
a  college  of  living  Oriental  languages  will  be 
established  by  the  Government  in  London, 
and  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the  Churches  to 
see  that  no  missionary  goes  to  the  East 
without  the  living  knowledge  of  the  East 
which  such  a  college  can  give.  We  realise 
now    that   the    Christian    Church    in    heathen 


THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES    97 

lands  cannot  be  built  up  by  men  burning  with 
zeal  only,  and  who  think  they  can  impart  to 
savages  a  ready-made  civilisation  and  a  religion 
which  has  been  transmuted  into  a  Western 
mould.  By  such  methods  the  Kaffir  may  be 
outwardly  Europeanised  ;  but  he  is  not  Chris- 
tianised. The  missionary  of  the  future  must 
have  all  the  training  of  a  specialist  ere  he 
turns  towards  the  East. 

No  field  of  the  missionary  enterprise  needs 
so  much  training  on  the  part  of  the  missionaries 
as  the  Mohammedan  lands.  And  there  could 
be  no  severer  condemnation  of  the  missionary 
training  hitherto  given  than  the  saying  of  an 
Arabic  scholar,  quoted  by  President  Douglas 
Mackenzie,  of  Hartford,  the  Chairman  of  the 
Commission  on  the  training  of  missionaries. 
81  The  Christian  missionaries,"  said  the  Eastern 
scholar,  "  in  some  parts  of  the  world  neglect 
Mohammedans  because  they  cannot  argue  with 
them."  The  fault  does  not  lie  with  the 
missionaries  ;  it  lies  with  their  training.  They 
took  the  line  of  least  resistance  ;  they  neglected 
the  field  which  was  hardest  to  till.  They  had 
not  been  taught  how  to  break  in  that  ground 
and  sow   the   seed   in   the   long-drawn  furrow. 

Won  for  Christ.  g 


98    THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 

They  knew  neither  the  language  thoroughly 
nor  the  history  which  the  language  enshrined. 
Ere  they  learned  the  vital  matters  they  were 
put  to  work.  Their  preparation  was  haphazard 
and  occasional.  "  It  is  better,"  declared  Presi- 
dent Mackenzie,  "  to  let  a  mission  station  suffer 
for  two  years  than  cripple  an  able  man  for 
forty  years." 

It  must  not,  however,  be  forgotten  that 
there  are  other  requisites  for  the  mis- 
sionary besides  a  knowledge  of  languages. 
The  missionary  must  regard  himself  as  a 
medium  for  the  transmission  of  the  healing 
touch  of  Jesus  Christ  to  a  suffering  and 
perishing  humanity.  And  to  this  end  he 
must  have  his  own  heart  pulsing  with  the 
sympathy  and  the  tenderness  of  Jesus  Christ. 
On  the  mission-field,  as  at  home,  the  primal 
force  is  character.  And  in  the  great  Christian 
army,  men  and  women,  whose  lives  are  trans- 
figured with  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  who  through 
their  acts  of  love  make  His  life  of  love 
credible  and  visible,  though  they  be  not  gifted 
with  the  gift  of  tongues,  can  yet  find  an 
honourable  place.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
teach  the    sayings   of   Christ  with   power   and 


THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES    99 

force;  it  is  a  greater  to  live  the  life  of  Christ 
visibly  before  men,  impressing  it  upon  them. 
From  the  conquering  host  of  Jesus  Christ 
these  cannot  be  spared.  Their  training  must 
be  in  that  mystical  life  of  the  Spirit,  which 
will  be  hereafter  the  national  genus  of  the 
Church  of  India. 

If  anything  be  now  perfectly  manifest  it  is 
this,  that  in  the  training  of  missionaries  the 
Church  must  only  aim  at  the  best.  If  the  Church 
is  content  with  the  second-rate,  then  it  gets 
something  very  much  worse.  All  over  the  East 
the  people  are  realising  the  importance  of 
education.  The  Chinese  are  having  rapidly 
diffused  among  them  the  knowledge  of  the 
West.  And  the  missionary  must  be  abreast  of 
that  knowledge,  otherwise  his  ignorance  will  be 
shown  up,  and  he  is  liable  to  the  retort,  "  If  you 
cannot  tell  me  earthly  things,  how  shall  I 
believe  when  you  tell  me  heavenly  things  ? " 
To-day  there  is  no  calling  which  needs  such  a 
preparation  as  that  of  the  missionary's.  It  is 
those  who  have  received  the  best  University 
education  who  make  the  most  successful  mis- 
sionaries. Those  who  have  not  had  such  a 
training  are  found  to  be  "  narrow  and  touchy," 


100    THE  TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES 

"  lacking  in  initiative,"  and  "  in  need  of  constant 
direction."  The  training  of  a  University  gives 
a  man  a  wide  outlook  ;  enables  him  to  rise  to 
a  reasoned  conception  of  the  relation  of  Christi- 
anity to  other  religions.  To-day  the  missionary 
must  be  generous  to  other  religions,  must  be 
able  to  compare  doctrine  to  doctrine,  ideal  with 
ideal,  and  must  guard  against  a  false  antago- 
nism to  the  non-Christian  religions.  He  must 
have  a  vision  of  the  world's  need  and  long 
search  after  God — and  of  the  satisfaction  of 
that  need.  And  he  must  distinguish  what  is 
essential  from  what  is  non-essential  in  the  form 
of  Christianity  in  which  he  has  himself  been 
trained.  It  would  be  deplorable  if  the  Christian 
Church  in  India  or  Africa  were  to  have  to 
undergo  the  pangs  and  turmoils  which  the 
Western  Churches  have  suffered  in  the  process 
of  ridding  themselves  of  the  excrescences  on 
the  body  of  Christianity.  It  must  be  the  ideal, 
the  life,  and  the  power  of  the  gospel  only — and 
not  these  Western  moulds  and  theories — which 
the  missionary  must  bring  to  bear  on  the  East. 
The  missionary  must  be  able  to  distinguish 
between  the  gold  and  the  dross.  The  fires  of  con- 
troversies have  cooled,  and  if  he  have  an  open 


THE   TRAINING  OF  MISSIONARIES     101 

mind  and  a  seeing  eye,  he  can  discern  the  pure 
gold.  And  it  is  that  pure  gold,  tried  and  purified, 
that  he  recommends  to  the  infant  Churches  in 
the  mission-field  for  their  acceptance,  and  for 
their  building  up  in  the  faith.  The  dross — he 
must  leave  it  all  behind,  at  Gibraltar  or  Suez. 
It  is  only  a  missionary  campaign  thus  informed 
and  thus  directed  which  can  successfully  cope 
with  the  great  task  of  "  transforming  the  Orient 
so  that  it  shall  be  both  thoroughly  Oriental  and 
fully  Christian."  It  is  not  as  one  who  is  bringing 
God  that  the  missionary  must  turn  towards  the 
East ;  but  rather  as  one  who  "  is  going  to  find 
God  already  there."  And  above  all  the  life  of 
the  missionaries  must  be  the  reflection  of  that 
ideal  which  they  seek  to  present  to  the  world 
— the  projection  of  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ  into 
the  midst  of  the  heathen  nations  of  to-day. 
To  that  end  there  must  be  no  mental  and  no 
spiritual  stagnation.  The  running  stream  must 
ever  be  replenished.  The  true  missionary's 
training  is  a  process  which  never  ends. 


THE   PROBLEM   OF  CHURCH  AND  STATE 


Christianity  in  relation  to  non-Christian  Governments — 
A  varying  problem — Changed  attitude  of  Christianity — 
Will  not  accept  blood-money — Policy  of  the  "  Mailed 
Fist" — Co-operation  with  Governments  in  sphere  of 
education — Unsatisfactory  attitude  of  British  Government 
towards  Christianity  in  Africa. 


VII 

THE   PROBLEM   OF   CHURCH   AND   STATE 

' '  There  is  no  theory  so  perfect  but  in  its  application  to 
human  affairs  it  has  to  be  modified." 

WE  are  accustomed  in  Scotland  to  the 
problem  which  this  report  discusses 
with  a  fullness  of  world-wide  detail — the 
problem  of  Church  and  State.  If  there  are 
those  who  think  that  the  difficulties  inherent 
in  the  right  relation  between  the  civil  and  the 
religious  power  are  peculiar  to  our  country, 
they  will  find  in  this  report  that  whither- 
soever Christianity  comes,  there  the  same 
problems  emerge.  The  chairman  of  the  Com- 
mission, Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh,  must  have 
felt  that  these  problems  presented  by  the 
Christian  Church  in  India  and  China  were 
strangely  familiar.  He  has  had  long  experi- 
ence of   the   problem  at  home— that  "hitherto 

105 


106  THE   PROBLEM   OF 

insolvable  problem  of  the  relations  between 
the  Church  and  the  State  and  the  discrimina- 
tion of  their  respective  spheres.  Those  who 
have  come  to  the  study  of  the  documents  laid 
before  the  Commission,  with  memories  of 
ancient  and  modern  conflicts  in  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  civil  history  of  Europe,  must  have 
recognised  strange  emergencies  of  the  same 
contending  principles  in  the  contact  of  the 
expanding  Church  with  Governments,  which, 
for  the  first  time,  have  had  to  take  account 
of  Christianity  both  as  a  destructive  and  a 
constructive  power,  acting  as  imperium  in 
imperio,  and  contending  for  a  law  and  a 
loyalty  different  from  and  higher  than  those 
recognised  by  any  State " — thus  the  report. 
If,  at  home,  where  the  Church  has  to  do  with 
a  Government  which  has  been  permeated  by 
Christianity,  and  which  governs  according  to 
its  principles,  there  be  difficulties  in  defining 
the  true  relationship  of  the  one  to  the  other, 
these  difficulties  are  increased  tenfold  when 
the  Church  has  to  do  with  a  Government 
which  is  non-Christian,  which  governs  often 
according  to  principles  wholly  antagonistic  to 
the  Christian  ideal,  and  which  adopts  an  atti- 


CHURCH  AND   STATE  107 

tude,  not  of  embarrassing  favour  as  at  home, 
but  of  open  or  covert  hostility.  The  problem 
of  Church  and  State  at  home  is  but  a  puny 
matter  compared  to  the  problem  of  Church 
and  State  in  the  non-Christian  lands.  The 
extent  and  colour  differ  ;   the  problem  is  one. 

Not  only  is  this  problem  co-extensive  with 
the  Christian  Church,  but  in  every  country 
it  appears  in  a  different  aspect  according  to 
the  varying  stage  of  the  nation's  development. 
In  proportion  as  a  nation  advances  in  civilisa- 
tion the  problem  becomes  less  difficult.  Thus, 
in  Japan,  the  problem  of  missions  in  relation 
to  Government  has  ceased  to  exist  in  any 
acute  form,  and  the  missionaries  enjoy  a 
freedom  of  action  greater  than  they  possess 
in  some  lands  under  Christian  rule.  It  is 
otherwise  in  Persia,  where  freedom  of  con- 
science is  an  unintelligible  term  and  tolera- 
tion a  violation  of  religious  obligation.  In 
China  there  is  a  deep-rooted  suspicion  of  mis- 
sions as  the  organs  of  foreign  powers  which 
mapped  out  China  as  their  prey,  which  forced 
upon  it  the  nefarious  opium  traffic,  and  whose 
aim  seemed  to  be  to  evangelise  at  the  point 
of  the  bayonet.     There  the  whole  policy  of  the 


108  THE   PROBLEM   OF 

country  differentiates  against  the  Chinese 
Christians,  so  that  they  cannot  enter  Govern- 
ment schools  and  colleges  without  adoring 
Confucius,  cannot  be  put  on  the  electoral 
rolls,  and  cannot  become  civil  officials.  For 
the  missionary  to  invoke  the  help  of  his  Con- 
sul, or  call  in  the  aid  of  a  Western  Power  to 
procure  greater  freedom,  would  only  increase 
the  resentment  of  the  nation  among  whom 
he  labours.  In  India  and  the  African  Pro- 
tectorates the  problem  is  again  different. 
There  Christians  rule  over  peoples  of  con- 
siderably advanced  civilisation,  as  in  India, 
and  over  those  of  low  development,  as  in 
Africa  ;  but  in  the  East  the  ruling  Power  is 
pledged  to  neutrality.  The  problem  is  com- 
plicated in  India  by  the  Native  States — three 
hundred  in  number — with  whose  internal 
affairs  the  Imperial  Government  does  not 
interfere  unless  gross  misgovernment  necessi- 
tates. In  these  the  missionaries  often  find 
difficulties  of  access,  and  difficulties  in  pro- 
curing sites  and  houses,  and  it  is  unwise  to 
appeal  to  the  supreme  Government.  In 
Egypt  the  problem  is  again  different,  for 
there    the     Khedive,     a     Moslem,     rules,    con- 


CHURCH  AND  STATE  109 

trolled  by  a  British  administrator,  and  com- 
mon-sense demands  a  tender  care  for  Moslem 
susceptibilities.  The  strange  result  is  this, 
that  Government  money,  which  is  largely  pro- 
vided by  the  Christians  of  the  country,  is 
expended  in  the  payment  of  Mohammedan 
sheiks,  who  teach  the  Koran  in  Government 
schools  to  Mohammedan  boys,  while  no  grant 
whatever  is  allowed  for  the  payment  of 
Christian  teachers  for  Christian  children  ! 
From  these  instances  it  is  manifest  how 
various  are  the  forms  in  which  this  problem 
presents  itself,  and  how  difficult  it  is  to  lay 
down  any  law  as  to  the  right  relation  of  the 
Church  to  the  State  which  shall  be  applicable 
everywhere. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Christian  missions 
in  the  past  suffered  from  the  adoption  of  a 
wrong  attitude  towards  the  native  govern- 
ments. In  China  Christianity  presented  itself 
as  a  foreign  power,  forcing  the  door  by  the 
gun  and  the  sword.  The  grim  jibe  of  Lord 
Salisbury  was  in  a  measure  true,  that  to  the 
native  races  there  came  first  the  Bible,  then 
the  trader,  and  then  the  sword !  But  in 
those     days     the     missionaries'    ideal    was    to 


110  THE  PROBLEM  OF 

rescue  individuals  from  the  disaster  that  was 
to  come ;  and  they  reposed  for  safety  on  the 
fact  that  they  were  subjects  of  a  Western 
Power.  In  our  day  a  different  ideal  prevails. 
The  missionaries  now  realise  their  duty  to 
the  Government  of  the  country  where  they 
labour,  and  that  their  supreme  object  is  to  link 
their  religious  work  to  the  common  weal. 
A  different  conception  has  arisen  of  the  civil 
power.  Even  in  heathen  lands  the  powers 
that  be  are  ordained  of  God.  They  are 
the  instruments  of  maintaining  order  and 
of  punishing  the  evil-doer.  Consequently 
missionaries  seek  to  co-operate  with  the  civil 
power,  and  avoid  as  far  as  possible  the 
attitude  of  antagonism.  To-day  missionaries 
are  of  one  mind  in  desiring  the  strength  and 
stability  of  the  nation  in  which  they  work, 
and  they  would  no  longer  call  in  their  own 
Government  to  force  upon  that  nation  an 
unwelcome  policy.  It  is  a  great  hindrance  in 
the  progress  of  Christianity  in  China  that 
converts  should  incur  such  grievous  disabilities 
— should  find  themselves  deprived  of  the 
franchise,  debarred  from  all  public  offices, 
and    their    children    admitted    to    the    public 


CHURCH  AND  STATE  111 

schools  only  on  condition  that  they  worship 
Confucius ;  but  to  seek  the  removal  of  these 
disabilities  by  the  pressure  of  the  Western 
Powers  would  be  fatal.  That  would  only 
increase  the  resentment  against  Christianity  as 
a  foreign  import  antagonistic  to  the  national 
ideal.  And  though  for  a  time  to  become  a 
Christian  means  to  lose  one's  heritage  in  the 
national  life,  yet  that  is  better  than  having 
the  heritage  restored  by  the  guns  of  a  foreign 
Power.  And  it  is  open  to  question  whether 
in  the  long  run  these  disabilities  are  not  a 
help  to  the  cause  of  Christianity.  Religion 
has  ever  taken  root  downward,  and  spread 
forth  its  branches  upward  when  the  heel  of 
the  persecutor  was  upon  it.  When  belief 
triumphs  over  difficulties  and  loss,  then 
character  is  formed.  The  triumph  of  Christi- 
anity must  not  be  identified  in  the  native 
mind  with  the  triumph  of  foreign  aggression. 
Freedom  must  come  by  the  permeating  of 
the  national  life  by  the  Christian  ideal  from 
within — and  not  by  the  strong  hand  of 
a  Christian  Power  from  without.  In  the 
sphere  of  Christian  missions  the  policy  of 
the  "Mailed  Fist"  is  a  thoroughly  discredited 


112  THE  PROBLEM  OF 

policy.      It     is     Islam     and     not     Christianity 
that  appeals  to  the  sword. 

There  is  no  more  impressive  demonstration 
of  the  new  spirit  which  now  animates  the 
missionary  enterprise  than  the  change  which 
has  taken  place  in  regard  to  demands  for 
indemnities  for  the  loss  caused  by  outbreaks 
of  fanaticism  and  the  destruction  of  mission 
property  through  lawless  turmoils.  The 
Churches  are  now  unanimous  in  refusing 
to  accept  indemnities  even  for  the  murder 
of  missionaries.  The  reason  is  that  such 
indemnities  could  only  be  exacted  by  the 
force  of  a  foreign  Power,  and  Christianity 
must  not  appear  in  China  or  elsewhere  as 
something  which  can  only  exist  and  grow 
when  it  has  the  "  reeking  tube  and  the 
smoking  shard "  behind  it.  Whatever  indem- 
nity might  be  exacted  from  the  Government 
by  rifles  and  gunboats,  would  have  eventually 
to  be  paid  by  the  people.  To  force  them  to 
pay  such  indemnities  would  only  be  the 
raising  of  another  barrier  against  the  accept- 
ance of  a  religion  which  would  appear  to 
them  as  a  despoiler.  Thus  it  has  come  about 
that     no     Church    will     now    accept     "blood- 


CHURCH  AND  STATE  113 

money"  in  any  shape  or  form.  They  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  sword  as  a 
means  for  defending  or  propagating  the 
gospel  of  peace. 

It  is,  however,  in  India  that  we  can  now 
see  Christianity  repeating  afresh  the  con- 
ditions which  are  to  us  so  familiar,  and 
entering  upon  working  arrangements  with 
the  Government  regarding  some  of  the 
spheres  of  Christian  activity.  In  the  field 
of  education  the  missionaries  have  been  the 
pioneers ;  and  the  Government,  realising  its 
duty  to  the  people  in  this  respect,  has 
co-operated  with  the  Churches  by  giving 
grants-in-aid.  It  is  through  this  co-operation 
with  the  Government  in  the  sphere  of 
education  that  the  Christian  colleges  have 
exercised  so  potent  an  influence  by  leavening 
the  Hindus  with  the  principles  of  Christian 
morality  and  polity.  Now,  after  long  cen- 
turies of  Christianity,  we  at  home  have  not 
yet  been  able  to  draw  the  line  between  the 
functions  of  the  Church  and  the  State  in  the 
matter  of  public  instruction,  and  it  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at  that  in  India  the  line 
of    demarcation    is    oscillating   violently.      The 

Won  for  Christ.  Q 


114  THE   PROBLEM  OF 

remarkable  fact  is  this,  that  in  India,  by  the 
help  of  the  Government,  the  Churches  have 
extended  their  educational  work  enormously. 
While  the  Government  gives  no  help  towards 
religious  instruction,  the  missionaries  are  left 
free  in  their  religious  teaching.  The  schools 
thus  supported  by  Government  grants  are 
subject  to  Government  inspection  and  Govern- 
ment restrictions,  but  the  missionaries  faced 
by  the  alternative  between  Christian  work 
under  these  limitations  and  Government  work 
which  is  in  principle  non-religious,  and  may 
become  anti-religious,  have  no  hesitation  in 
accepting  the  former.  As  we  have  seen, 
what  the  Churches  fear  is  that  the  grants- 
in-aid  may  come  to  be  so  administered  as  to 
militate  against  the  missionary  schools.  While 
in  India,  as  at  home,  there  are  a  few  who 
disapprove  of  Christian  institutions  being  sup- 
ported by  Government,  yet  the  great  majority 
are  grateful  for  the  help  and  co-operation  of 
the  Government.  And  when  the  Government 
restricts  the  activity  of  missionaries,  and 
forbids  them  entering  some  territories,  they 
console  themselves  with  the  thought  that 
"there    is    so    much    unoccupied     land    to    be 


CHURCH  AND  STATE  115 

possessed  in  India  itself  that  a  very  special 
Divine  call  would  be  needed  to  justify  a 
spiritual  raid  across  a  forbidden  frontier." 
Thus  in  India  the  missionaries  acknowledge 
that  the  civil  power  has  also  its  Divine 
sanctions,  and  that  the  Church  cannot  be 
isolated  from  it. 

The  great  struggle  of  the  future  will  lie 
undoubtedly  between  the  two  great  Theistic 
religions — Christianity  and  Mohammedanism. 
It  is  remarkable  that  it  is  in  the  impact 
between  these  in  Africa  that  the  only  strong 
complaint  emerges  against  the  attitude  of  the 
British  Government  towards  missions.  In 
Egypt  we  are  administrators  and  not  rulers ; 
but  even  there  it  may  well  be  asked  whether 
our  policy  should  not  be  the  policy  of  those 
who  are  Christians  first  and  administrators 
afterwards.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that, 
judging  from  the  complaints  of  missionaries, 
in  the  Sudan  and  in  Northern  Nigeria,  the 
Government  differentiates  in  favour  of  Islam 
and  against  Christianity.  In  these  regions 
Christian  missions  are  not  allowed  free  scope. 
"  In  Nigeria,"  declares  a  missionary,  "  the 
Government,  nominally  neutral,  is  in  reality  any- 


116  THE  PROBLEM  OF 

thing  but  neutral — it  bolsters  up  the  Moslem." 
It  is  not  only  extraordinary,  but  also  painful, 
to  hear  strong  complaints  of  the  attitude  of 
the  Gordon  Memorial  College  at  Khartoum 
towards  Christianity.  The  influence  of  the 
college  is  Mohammedan;  the  Koran  is  taught, 
while  no  provision  is  made  for  teaching  the 
Bible  or  Christian  prayer.  When  one  thinks 
of  that  fearless  Christian  crusader  whose  name 
that  college  bears,  these  things  bring  a  feeling 
akin  to  humiliation  and  consternation.  Has 
Christianity  sunk  so  low  as  this  in  the  face 
of  Islam?  It  is  truly  one  of  the  great  ironies 
of  history  that  Mohammedanism  should  be 
conquering  Africa  under  the  aegis  of  a  Chris- 
tian Empire.  That  it  should  be  so  may  be  a 
matter  outside  the  sphere  of  the  Christian 
Government ;  but  that  it  should  be  actively  en- 
couraged by  the  Christian  Government  cannot 
be  otherwise  designated  but  as  a  "policy  of 
sheer  idiocy."  Formerly  the  warlike  pagan 
tribes  kept  Islam  at  bay ;  now  these  tribes  are 
conquered  by  the  British  power,  and  in  the 
Britannic  peace  the  emissaries  of  Islam  have 
free  scope.  It  will  scarcely  be  long  endured 
that  the  missionaries  of  Christianity  should  not 


CHURCH  AND  STATE  117 

have  free  scope  also.  The  British  Government 
in  Africa  will  speedily  learn  the  folly  they 
commit  who  develop  the  forces  which  are 
antagonistic  to  their  own  ideals.  This  will, 
doubtless,  be  among  the  first  matters  dealt 
with  by  that  permanent  organisation  which 
has  been  established  by  the  World  Missionary 
Conference  to  watch  over  the  imperial  aspects 
of  missions. 

There  is  a  curious  parallel  between  the  re- 
lations which  are  growing  up  in  India  of 
Christians  to  the  Government  and  the  rela- 
tions which  exist  at  home  as  the  result  of 
the  slow  growth  of  centuries.  In  India  Chris- 
tianity is  manifesting  itself  as  the  greatest 
power  working  for  righteousness,  and  the 
State  which  seeks  the  welfare  of  the  people 
cannot  be  indifferent  to  that  which  works 
most  effectively  for  the  national  weal,  and 
thus  the  system  of  grants-in-aid  has  arisen. 
At  home  the  State  felt,  too,  that  it  could  not 
stand  aloof  from  the  power  that  makes  for 
righteousness — and  National  Churches  have 
been  the  result.  In  India  a  Rajah  is  favour- 
ably impressed,  and  he  gives  a  site  and  a  tract 
of   land   to   a   mission,  and   the   Church   which 


118    PROBLEM  OF  CHURCH  AND  STATE 

at  home  may  not  approve  of  any  direct  rela- 
tionship whatever  with  the  State,  and  strongly 
deprecates  snch  relationship,  receives  the  grant 
of  site  and  endowment  of  land  with  gratitude 
from  the  non-Christian  Rajah.  If  these  en- 
dowments he  lawful  at  the  hands  of  a  Rajah 
in  the  East,  surely  they  cannot  be  wrong  at 
the  hands  of  a  Christian  Government  in  the 
West.  The  relation  in  which  missions  stand 
to  Governments  in  non-Christian  lands  throws 
an  interesting  light  on  problems  which  have 
sore  vexed  the  Scottish  nation.  Out  of  the 
East  once  more  light  may  break  forth.  One 
result  of  the  World  Missionary  Conference  may 
be  the  creating  of  an  atmosphere  in  which 
the  relations  between  Church  and  State  may 
be  at  last  seen  in  its  right  proportion.  It  is  a 
matter  which  can  never  be  settled  by  rules 
and  axioms.  The  line  of  demarcation  must  be 
drawn  in  loops  and  curves. 


THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 


The  native  Church — How  Christianity  spread  at  the  first 
— World  must  be  evangelised  by  the  native  Church — 
Already  begun  in  Manchuria  and  Korea — The  causes 
which  make  the  native  Church  the  instrument — Indi- 
genous— Knows  the  language — A  living  demonstration — 
The  enthusiasm  of  first  love — Principal  Rainy  and  the 
native  Christians. 


VIII 

THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

/^AN  the  world  be  won  for  Christ  ?  Can 
^-^  one  ideal  of  life  be  made  operative  the 
wide  world  over,  and  thus  the  era  of  universal 
peace  become  possible  ?  Without  it  such  an 
era  can  never  come,  for  divergent  ideals  will 
necessarily  conflict.  If  any  seek  to  answer 
the  question  by  contrasting  the  masses  of 
heathenism,  entrenched  behind  the  power  of 
ignorance  and  superstition,  with  the  Chris- 
tian Church  of  the  West,  the  conclusion  is 
inevitable  that,  if  there  be  no  power  but  the 
power  which  the  West  can  bring  to  bear 
on  the  East,  the  task  is  hopeless.  The 
West  has  been  working  for  over  a  century, 
and  it  has  only  prepared  the  way  for  future 
work.  That  is  all  it  has  effected.  But  this 
work  is  not  the  work  of  the  Western  Church 

121 


122  THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

alone;  it  is  the  work  of  the  African  Church, 
of  the  Indian  Church,  of  the  Chinese  Church 
— in  a  word,  it  is  the  work  of  the  native 
Church,  indigenous  in  every  land.  It  is  when 
we  look  at  the  problem  thus  that  the  mood 
of  despair  passes,  and  we  reach  the  conviction 
that  not  only  can  the  world  be  won  for  Christ, 
but  that  the  conquest  will  be  soon. 

It  is  from  the  past  that  we  gain  assurance 
in  the  present.  And  if  we  look  back  to  the 
beginning,  and  ask  how  Christianity  won  its 
wonderful  triumphs  in  the  Roman  world,  we 
will  find  that  it  was  because  Christianity 
became  indigenous  in  every  country,  and  every 
convert  became  a  missionary.  This  is  what 
Gibbon  depicts  in  a  sentence :  "  Every  convert 
to  Christianity  felt  it  a  sacred  duty  to  diffuse 
among  his  relatives  and  friends  the  inestimable 
blessings  which  he  had  received."  We  can  see 
the  process  going  on.  For  a  handful  of  poor 
men  life  is  suddenly  transfigured  by  the  great 
message  of  the  Gospel,  and  they  go  straight- 
way forth  each  to  his  friends  and  neighbours 
saying,  "I  was  poor,  and  wretched,  and  un- 
happy ;  life  was  hard  and  sorrow  was  over  me 
like  a  cloud ;   I  heard   of  Jesus,  and  though  I 


THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR  123 

expected  nothing  I  went  to  hear,  and  lo !  my 
life  is  renewed ;  love  again  throbs  through  my 
heart,  hope  again  has  shot  the  dark  clouds 
with  radiance ;  I  have  tasted  that  God  is  good 
and  gracious — come  thou  and  taste  also."  It 
was  not  by  the  Apostles,  or  the  great  Inspired, 
that  the  Roman  world  was  won  for  Christ ;  it 
was  by  the  nameless  common  multitude  who, 
having  tasted  the  living  water,  went  forth 
with  the  urgent  call,  "  Come,  taste  and  see — 
God  is  life  and  love,  and  God  is  for  you."  It 
is  a  man's  friend  who  can  speak  to  him  so; 
only  in  his  own  language  can  an  invitation 
come  to  him  compellingly  so ;  a  stranger  and 
a  foreigner  cannot  find  the  words  which  will 
wander  to  his  heart  so.  He  must  be  of  one 
heart  and  one  mind  with  them  who  would 
win  men  so.  There  are  things  so  deep  and 
sacred  that  a  stranger  intermeddleth  not  with 
them. 

Therein,  then,  lieth  the  assurance  of  triumph 
for  Christianity.  The  missionary  will  not  win 
the  world — the  native  Church  in  every  land 
will  win  its  own  land.  The  missionary  opens 
the  sluice — thereafter  he  can  only  stand  and 
watch   the   living   waters   spread.      His   failure 


124  THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

has  been  that  he  thought  that  he  himself  was 
to  be  the  living  water ;  he  did  not  realise  that 
he  was  called  only  to  open  the  sluice.  Hence 
came  his  efforts  to  withstand  the  swift  flow  of 
the  stream.  He  was  afraid  that  without  his 
hand  the  stream  might  run  into  devious 
channels.  He  thought  he  was  called  to  shep- 
herd the  rain-clouds.  He  has  to  learn  that, 
after  a  nucleus  has  been  formed,  a  few 
hundreds  gathered  into  the  Church,  he  and 
his  agents  cease  to  be  the  paramount  factor  in 
the  diffusion  of  the  gospel.  The  work  passes 
from  his  hands  into  the  hands  of  the  indi- 
genous Church.  Instead  of  being  the  ruling 
force,  he  must  be  content  to  become  a  very 
small  factor  in  the  work  of  conquering  the 
world  for  Christ.  He  has  found  it  difficult  to 
descend  from  his  throne  of  superiority ;  yet  he 
must  descend  speedily,  for  the  sowing  only  is 
his  and  the  reaping-time  has  come — and  the 
reaping  is  for  others.  The  missionary  whose 
policy  exposes  him  to  the  taunt  that  his  Church 
is  the  "  missionaries'  Church "  is  a  missionary 
who  does  not  know  his  business. 

Whoever  would  realise  this  has  only  to  look 
at  those  mission-fields  where  the  power  of  the 


THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR  125 

gospel  has  been  most  potently  manifesting 
itself  in  the  building  up  of  the  Church  of  God. 
There  are  countries  in  which  Christianity 
has  won  great  triumphs  in  these  last  years 
But  in  every  case  the  triumphs  have  been 
won  by  the  native  Church,  and  not  by  the 
foreign  missionaries.  In  Manchuria  a  strong 
and  living  Christian  Church  has  been  evolved 
from  "  the  mass  of  foreigner-hating  idolaters 
who  filled  the  land."  Of  30,000  converts  bap- 
tized in  twenty  years  that  veteran  missionary, 
Dr.  John  Ross,  declares  that  only  about  100 
were  baptized  as  the  direct  result  of  the 
preaching  of  the  missionaries,  the  rest — 29,900 
— were  brought  into  the  Christian  Church 
through  the  influence  and  work  of  the  native 
Christians.  But  the  brightest  example  of  this 
is  the  Church  in  Korea.  There,  under  the 
power  of  a  remarkable  revival,  the  Church  has 
made  such  strides  that  it  looks  as  if  Korea 
would  speedily  become  a  Christian  State.  A 
great  part  of  that  triumph  is  owing  to  the 
fact  that  the  native  Church  has  had  the 
responsibility  laid  on  its  heart  and  conscience 
of  winning  their  brethren.  In  some  cases  in 
Korea  it   has   actually  been   made  a  condition 


126  THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

of  Church  membership  that  the  applicant 
should  have  endeavoured  to  win  others  to 
Christ.  A  remarkable  form  of  collection  has 
sprung  up  in  the  Korean  Church — a  collection 
of  "  days  of  service."  In  the  offertory  the 
worshipper  deposits,  not  money,  but  a  pledge 
of  the  number  of  days  of  personal  service 
he  will  give  to  the  cause  of  Christ  in  the 
coming  year.  At  one  service  a  collection  was 
taken  of  67,000  days  of  personal  evangelising 
work !  The  work  which  one  native  convert 
can  do  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  Dr.  Christie 
of  Monkden.  "  A  patient  came  to  the  Monk- 
den  hospital  many  years  ago,"  he  writes ; 
"  when  admitted  he  had  never  heard  the 
gospel,  but  before  he  left  he  had  a  clear 
knowledge  of  Christian  truth,  and  showed  an 
intense  desire  to  make  it  known  to  others. 
For  many  years  he  witnessed  for  Christ,  most 
of  the  time  without  salary  of  any  kind  and 
under  no  control  but  that  of  his  heavenly 
Master.  The  missionary  who  had  charge  of 
the  district  where  he  laboured  till  his  martyr- 
dom by  the  Boxers  tells  us  that  he  was  the 
direct  means  of  leading  at  least  two  thou- 
sand souls   into   the   fold   of   Christ." 


THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR  127 

The  spirit  which  shines  so  brightly  in  Korea 
and  Manchuria  is  working  all  over  the  mis- 
sion-fields. In  Pekin  University  the  Christian 
students  have  banded  themselves  together  to 
evangelise  their  own  country.  When  facts 
like  these  are  manifest  on  the  horizon,  when 
the  love  which  stirs  in  the  heart  of  the  con- 
vert towards  God  straightway  seeks  to  embrace 
his  brethren,  when  one  convert  ere  his  mar- 
tyrdom wins  two  thousand  souls  for  his  crown 
— then  we  realise  that  the  paramount  factor 
in  missions,  so  far  as  human  agency  is  con- 
cerned, is  the  native  Church,  and  that  through 
it  the  world  is  to  be  won  for  Jesus  Christ. 

The  reasons  which  render  the  native  Church 
the  most  potent  instrument  of  evangelisation 
are  manifest.  They  can  be  stated  as  fol- 
lows : — 

1.  The  missionary  is  exposed,  in  China  and 
India  and  all  over  the  East,  to  the  prejudice 
which  is  everywhere  current  against  the 
foreigner.  This  prejudice  is  not  unreasonable. 
When  we  recall  the  experience  which  China 
alone  has  had  of  the  foreigner ;  how  opium 
was  forced  on  the  Chinese  Empire  by  the 
sword  of  the  West ;  how  "  treaty  rights  "  have 


128  THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

been  but  another  name  for  "moral  wrong" 
— then  a  prejudice  against  foreigners  is  quite 
intelligible.  The  missionary  is  thus  exposed 
to  the  calumny  that  he  is  a  paid  agent  of 
the  hated  foreigners,  the  enemies  of  the  East. 
The  native  Church  is  free  from  this  great 
impediment.  It  embodies  Christianity,  not  as 
a  foreign  import,  but  as  an  indigenous  growth. 
It  is  the  proof  that  Christianity  is  not  hostile 
to  the  national  life,  but  seeks  its  ennobling 
and  its  strengthening. 

2.  Whereas  the  missionary  is  rarely  able  to 
master  perfectly  the  language  of  the  people, 
and  finds  it  the  work  of  a  lifetime  to  under- 
stand their  ways  of  thought,  the  native  Chris- 
tian starts  with  a  perfect  command  of  the 
idiom,  and  a  perfect  knowledge  of  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  those  whom  he  seeks  to  reach. 
The  advantage  which  this  gives  him  in  enforc- 
ing the  truths  of  the  gospel  is  incalculable. 
Where  the  missionary  can  only  go  "about  it 
and  about,"  the  native  evangelist  can  from  the 
first  pierce  down  to  the  very  heart. 

3.  The  native  Church  is  the  demonstration  to 
the  people  of  what  Christianity  can  do  for 
the  transforming   and   ennobling   of  the  com- 


THE  PARAMOUNT  FACTOR  129 

mon  life.  It  is  difficult  for  the  non-Christian 
to  realise  how  life  can  be  lived  apart  from 
the  ancient  ways  in  which  he  has  been  reared. 
The  native  Christian  Church  shows  him  that 
it  is  possible  to  live  on  a  higher  plane  in  the 
new  organisation  which  the  Christian  Church 
provides.  The  well-organised  native  Church  is 
the  visible  witness  how  a  social  life  of  a 
higher  type  is  possible  through  obedience  to 
the  Gospel.  When  the  question  was  put  at  a 
Christian  gathering  in  China,  "  Will  those 
stand  up  who  have  been  attracted  to  Chris- 
tianity by  their  Christian  neighbours  ? "  the 
missionaries  were  not  a  little  surprised  when 
the  bulk  of  the  audience  stood  up.  Herein 
is  visible  the  power  of  the  native  Church  as 
compared  with  the  missionary.  By  the  prac- 
tice of  the  Christian  virtues,  by  the  growth 
of  knowledge  and  the  power  knowledge  brings, 
the  people  see  how  a  higher  life  is  possible 
— and  seeing,  they,  too,  call  for  Christian  teach- 
ing, and  seek  a  place  in  the  new  and  higher 
order.     Thus  the  Christian  Church  grows. 

4.  There  is  also  manifested  in  the  native 
Church  that  enthusiasm  which  the  first  impres- 
sions of  the  gospel  arouse  in  the  hearts  of  men. 

Won  for  Christ  JQ 


130  THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

We  in  the  West  have  been  in  a  measure 
deadened  by  custom  to  the  beauty  and  power 
of  Christianity.  We  have  known  it  from  the 
first ;  custom  has  staled  it.  But  in  the  East 
it  is  as  it  was  at  the  first  when  Jesus  walked 
in  Galilee  and  when  at  Pentecost  His  disciples 
were  so  filled  with  the  power  of  the  new 
Spirit  which  possessed  them  that  their  ton- 
gues were  as  "tongues  of  fire,"  and  in  the 
might  of  a  divine  enthusiasm  they  went 
forth  to  conquer  the  world.  Thus  it  is  to-day 
when  Christianity  comes  fresh  to  a  race,  and 
Jesus  Christ  manifests  Himself  for  the  first 
time  to  the  eye  of  the  spirit.  Then  comes 
the  glow  which  came  at  the  first  —  and  the 
native  Christians  to-day,  like  the  Christians 
of  old,  speak  with  the  burning  "  tongue  of 
fire." 

It  is  the  native  Christian  who  will  win  the 
world  for  Christ.  Of  that  there  is  no  doubt. 
The  Western  Church  can  only  prepare  him 
for  his  task.  And  in  preparing  him  the  Church 
must  be  careful  not  to  separate  him  from  his 
own  people.  Though  he  be  "in  Christ,"  yet 
he  must  ever  remember  that  "he  is  one  of  his 
own  race,   and   continue    in    their  manner    of 


THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR  131 

life  and  national  customs  in  so  far  as  these 
are  consistent  with  the  Christian  life."  The 
native  Christian  should  never  be  in  the  pay  of 
the  Western  Church.  As  such  he  appears  to  the 
people  to  be  an  agent  of  the  "  foreign  devils." 
Only  as  a  member  of  the  native  Church,  and 
responsible  to  it  alone,  can  he  wield  his  full 
power.  When  we  think  of  the  long  and  hard 
campaign  before  the  Church  ere  the  world 
is  won  for  Christ,  we  can  be  of  good  courage. 
From  hand  to  hand  the  sacred  torch  shall 
pass  until  the  whole  world  is  illumined.  "  We 
men  in  the  West,"  wrote  Principal  Rainy  in 
answer  to  the  greetings  of  the  Madras  College 
students,  "  have  no  better  claim  in  Jesus  Christ 
than  you  have.  We  possess  nothing  so  precious 
— we  value  nothing  so  much — we  have  no 
source  of  good  so  full,  fruitful,  and  enduring 
— we  have  nothing  to  compare  with  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  To  Him  we  bear  wit- 
ness. And  we  would  gladly  consent  that 
you  should  cease  to  listen  to  us,  if  you  would 
be  led  to  give  your  ear  and  heart  to  Him." 
That  is  the  true  attitude  of  the  West — having 
brought  the  gospel  then  to  stand  aside,  gladly 
consenting    that     the     East    should     cease     to 


132         THE   PARAMOUNT  FACTOR 

listen  to  the  West,  rejoicing  to  behold  the 
East  listening  to  Jesus  Christ  alone ;  laying 
it  as  a  sacred  charge  on  the  hearts  and  souls 
of  the  men  and  women  of  the  East  to  make 
known  to  their  own  people  the  glad  tidings 
as  they  receive  them.  It  has  already  been 
fully  demonstrated  on  the  mission-field  that 
Christianity  evokes  the  most  intense  and 
passionate  devotion.  Whenever  belief,  what- 
ever it  be,  lays  hold  on  men  so,  it  inevitably 
propagates  itself.  The  love  and  passionate 
ardour  which  Christianity  inspires,  the  spiritual 
powers  which  it  unlooses  —  these  are  the 
dynamic  force  through  which  the  world  will 
be  won  for  Jesus  Christ. 


THE  IMPELLING  MOTIVE— "FOR  MY 
SAKE" 


Necessity  for  a  strong  base  for  Christian  army — The 
question  of  diffusion  or  concentration — Diffusion  the 
historic  policy — Motives  impelling  Church  forward — 
Needs  of  man — And  the  glory  of  Jesus  Christ — Motive 
of  personal  obligation  to  Jesus  Christ. 


IX 

THE   IMPELLING   MOTIVE— "FOR   MY   SAKE" 

IT   is   in   those   countries   where   Christianity- 
has  been  rooted  for  centuries  that  the  last 
word   will   have   to   be    spoken    regarding    the 
issue   of   the   conflict  of  Christianity   with   the 
non-Christian  religions.     The  power  of  an  army 
depends   on   the   force   behind  it   at   home,   on 
the  sinews  of  war  which  the  home-base  is  able 
to  provide.     No  army,  however  eager,  can  win 
a  campaign  if  the  line  of  communication  with 
its   base  be   cut,  if  behind  it  there  be  not  the 
self-sacrifice    which    will    continue    to    fill     its 
depleted  ranks,  and  the  increasing  power  which 
will  enable  it  ever  to  push  forward  its  advance 
guard.     The  question,  from  this  point  of  view, 
resolves   itself  into   this— whether  there    is    in 
the   Churches   at  home  sufficient  vitality,   self- 
sacrifice,   and  spiritual  power  to  maintain   the 

135 


/ 


136  THE  IMPELLING  MOTIVE— 

campaign  against  heathenism,  and  to  enable 
an  advance  to  be  made  with  a  force  which  will 
compel  victory.  The  Church  in  the  mission- 
field  will  not  rise  higher  than  the  level  of 
spiritual  power  and  self-sacrifice  which  the 
Church  has  attained  at  home.  If  the  Church 
is  failing  to  fill  up  its  ranks  at  home — it  is 
hopeless  to  think  of  conquering  abroad.  From 
the  mission-fields  there  comes  to  the  Churches 
the  call  summoning  them  to  examine  their 
resources  in  face  of  the  stupendous  task  which 
lies  before  them. 

Outside  the  utmost  circumference  within 
which  Christianity  brings  its  influence  to  bear 
on  the  non-Christian  races,  there  are,  as  we 
have  seen,  over  120,000,000  of  various  nations 
and  tribes  as  yet  wholly  unreached  by  the 
gospel.  Is  Christianity  at  once  to  bring  the 
power  of  the  gospel  to  bear  on  these,  or  is 
it  to  leave  them  a  prey  to  the  powers  of  dark- 
ness? There  are  those  who  would  say  that 
the  true  policy  of  Christianity  is  the  policy 
of  concentration  and  not  of  diffusion ;  that 
the  wiser  course  is  to  strengthen  the  power 
of  Christianity  in  the  countries  already  occu- 
pied, rather  than  wasting  its  strength  in  futile 


"FOR  MY  SAKE"  137 

efforts  to  enter  the  unoccupied  lands.  This  is 
the  old  familiar  cry  that  Christianity  ought  first 
of  all  to  fully  Christianise  the  countries  which 
it  has  occupied  ere  it  proceeds  to  the  regions 
beyond.  When  our  cities  at  home  are  strewn 
with  the  wreckage  of  humanity,  why  go  abroad 
to  evangelise  the  heathen?  When  India  is 
only  touched  by  the  gospel,  why  think  of  Thibet 
or  Bhutan  until  India  be  won?  Let  the  work 
of  salvage  be  first  done  among  the  flotsam 
and  jetsam  of  humanity  strewing  our  streets  ; 
or,  if  you  will,  let  it  be  fully  done  in  the 
countries  already  occupied — and  when  that  is 
done,  then  think  of  a  further  advance.  Let 
the  one  hundred  and  twenty  millions  wait? 
So  says  the  objector.  But  the  whole  of  the 
lessons  of  history  are  against  this  plausible 
reasoning.  Christianity  does  not  pause  till 
every  wrong  be  righted  and  every  dark  place 
illumined  in  the  sphere  of  its  occupation  ere 
it  stretches  forth  its  arms  to  the  regions 
beyond.  Asia  was  not  won  for  Christ  when 
the  tentmaker  of  Tarsus  crossed  the  Hellespont 
carrying  the  gospel  to  Europe. 

If    Christianity    had    tarried    in    Asia    until 
Asia  were  wholly  won  for  Christ,  Europe  would 


138  THE  IMPELLING  MOTIVE— 

never  have  been  Christianised.  Ireland  was  not 
wholly  Christianised  when  Columba,  impelled 
by  the  missionary  spirit,  put  forth  to  sea  in 
his  frail  coracle,  and  landed  in  Iona,  bearing 
the  torch  of  the  gospel  to  heathen  Scotland. 
It  was  often  when  at  home  the  cause  of 
Christianity  was  in  sore  peril  that  its  mission- 
aries went  forth,  as  if  in  haste,  to  the  un- 
occupied lands.  It  was  when  Italy  was  ravaged 
by  the  invaders  that  Gregory  dispatched  his 
emissaries  to  heathen  Britain,  and  through 
a  country  blackened  by  Lombard  fires 
Augustine  passed  on  his  mission.  Such  was 
the  unquenchable  faith  that  of  old  the  fol- 
lowers of  Jesus  Christ  had  in  the  greatness 
of  their  cause  and  in  the  power  which  lay 
behind  them,  that  no  perils  crowding  round 
them  at  home  made  them  ever  falter  in  their 
purpose,  or  doubt  that  the  power  of  their 
Lord  was  equal  to  the  task  of  conquering  the 
world.  If  to-day  the  Church  be  faced  with 
sore  problems  and  grievous  perils  at  home, 
yet  it  is  when  Christianity  still  persists  in 
stretching  forth  its  arms  to  the  uttermost 
ends  of  the  earth  that  the  followers  of  Jesus 
Christ   evince    the    same    high    faith    in    their 


"FOR  MY  SAKE"  139 

divine  calling,  the  same  certainty  that  they 
possess  the  heavenly  treasure.  Through  the 
stretching  forth  of  the  arm  of  old,  Christianity 
developed  the  power  which  conquered;  and  it 
is  through  the  same  stretching  forth  of  the 
arm  that  Christianity  to-day  will  continue  to 
develop  the  same  conquering  power.  When 
Christianity  was  a  living  power  it  never,  in 
the  past,  paused  at  the  boundaries  of  un- 
occupied lands;  if  it  would  to-day  prove  that 
the  power  and  the  life  are  still  in  its  midst, 
it  will  prove  it  by  refusing  to  pause  at  the 
boundaries  of  the  lands  which  are  as  yet  un- 
occupied. When  Christianity  refuses  to  pause 
at  any  frontier  it  is  only  acting  according  to 
the  operation  of  the  laws  which  regulated  its 
expansion  for  nineteen  centuries.  It  persists 
in  acting  on  the  teaching  of  the  centuries 
rather  than  on  the  theory  of  an  hour. 

However  much  the  policy  of  pause  and 
concentration  may  have  of  recommendation 
behind  it  (and  doubtless  it  has  much),  yet 
there  are  motives  which  impel  the  onward 
march  of  Christianity,  and  these  cannot  be 
gainsaid.  The  call  which  sounds  in  the  ear  of 
Christians,   summoning  them   to   action,  is  not 


140  THE   IMPELLING  MOTIVE— 

the  call  of  opportunism,  it  is  the  call  of 
human  destitution.  Wherever  men  lie  in  the 
degradation  and  brutality  of  ignorance,  hence 
the  call  comes  to  the  Christian  Church.  The 
vision  of  the  children  of  the  All  -  Father 
perishing  in  ignorance  cannot  be  blotted  out 
from  before  the  eyes  which  have  once  seen 
Christ — blotted  out  by  theories  of  opportunism  ! 
No  man  has  ever  come  near  to  Jesus  Christ, 
or  lain  with  head  on  His  breast  as  John  lay 
in  the  upper  chamber,  without  hearing  the 
heart  of  the  Lord  beating  with  that  passion 
of  love  for  all  men  which  would  bless  and 
save  humanity.  No  race  can  appropriate  Jesus 
Christ  to  itself  alone,  saying  "He  is  mine." 
The  heart  of  Christ  throbs  with  the  love  not 
of  one  race,  but  of  all  races — the  love  of 
universal  humanity.  And  the  man  who  has 
listened  to  the  beating  of  His  heart  will 
refuse  to  pause  at  any  frontier;  he  will  recog- 
nise no  boundaries  in  the  outflow  of  that  love 
to  men.  In  the  love  of  God  to  men,  flowing 
to  them  in  Christ  Jesus,  there  can  be  no 
compartments.  To  that  love  the  necessities  of 
men,  wherever  they  are,  will  unceasingly  call. 
When  the  Church  refuses   to   hear  the  call  of 


"FOR  MY  SAKE"  141 

human  need  from  beyond  the  Himalayas,  or 
from  the  recesses  of  Africa,  the  Church  will 
have  ceased  to  share  in  her  Lord's  passionate 
love  to  men. 

It  is  not  merely  the  destitution  of  man 
which  impels  the  Church  ever  forward,  but 
deeper  than  that  is  this  motive — the  glory  of 
the  Church's  Lord  demands  it.  His  command 
is  universal,  and  the  Church  in  very  loyalty 
must  obey.  It  does  not  redound  to  the  credit 
of  the  Church,  nor  to  her  conception  of  what 
the  glory  of  her  Lord  demands,  that  after  all 
these  centuries  His  universal  command  should 
still  be  unfulfilled.  He  standeth  still  before 
the  eyes  of  His  people,  and  pointing  to  His 
hands  and  His  feet,  He  says :  "  Go,  tell  every 
creature."  In  the  fulfilment  of  that  com- 
mand the  Church  owes  it  to  her  Lord  to 
suffer  no  frontier  to  stand  in  the  way.  No 
appeal  to  opportunism,  no  theorising  regarding 
concentration,  can  make  the  Church  deaf  to 
the  Lord's  universal  command.  If  Christianity 
pauses  before  barriers,  and  suffers  millions 
of  men  to  live  and  die  with  no  opportunity 
of  hearing  of  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus 
Christ,   it   only   means  that  Christians  are  not 


142  THE   IMPELLING  MOTIVE— 

alive   to   the   sacrifice   which   the  glory  of   the 
Lord  demands  of  them. 

But  the  Church  in  its  present  stage  of 
development  is  unequal  to  the  great  work  of 
bringing  the  power  of  the  gospel  to  bear  on 
all  nations — of  rendering  the  universal  com- 
mand operative.  What  the  Church  needs, 
then,  is  the  deepening  of  her  own  spiritual 
life,  the  discovery  of  the  spiritual  power 
which  is  within  her,  the  quickening  of  her 
energies  through  the  lifting  of  the  Church 
to  a  higher  level  of  faith.  The  power  of 
Christianity  as  a  missionary  force  is  the 
measure  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  which  it 
possesses.  What  the  followers  of  Jesus  Christ, 
need  is  to  have  awakened  in  them  the  sense 
of  personal  obligation.  Let  the  Church  bring 
its  members  each  face  to  face  with  Jesus  Christ, 
and  let  them  in  His  presence  ask  themselves 
what  He  has  done  for  them.  Let  them  scan 
the  blessings  which  enrich  their  lives,  and 
which  Jesus  alone  has  brought  them.  Let 
them  recall  the  childhood  cradled  and  sheltered 
in  the  pure  family  life,  surrounded  by  every 
ennobling  influence  with  which  piety  could  en- 
circle them ;  let  them  think  of  all  the  gifts  of 


"FOR  MY  SAKE"  143 

charity  and  healing  and  mercy  and  beauty 
which  have  enriched  them ;  let  them  live  again 
in  that  hour  when,  through  the  vision  of  Christ, 
the  Divine  came  to  their  souls,  and  through 
the  quickening  of  His  Spirit  their  lives  were 
brought  to  God  ;  let  them  recall  how  the 
clouds  of  their  alienation  were  wafted  away, 
and  there  blazed  out  before  the  inner  eye  the 
glories  of  that  world  which  eye  has  not  seen ; 
let  them  think  how  life  was  ennobled  and 
glorified  as  they  heard  the  call,  "Arise  and 
lay  hold  on  your  heritage  as  sons  of  God " ; 
let  them  again  come  face  to  face  with  the 
Cross  of  Jesus  Christ  and  see  the  channel 
through  which  all  these  came  to  them — the 
self-sacrifice  of  which  the  Cross  was  the  measure. 
And  let  them  hear  the  great  question :  "  All 
this  Christ  has  done  for  you — what  have  you 
done  for  Him  ? "  Christianity  is  self-sacrifice 
and  burden-bearing  —  have  you  converted  it 
into  self -pleasing  and  self-indulgence?  Can 
those  who  owe  everything  that  makes  life 
worth  living  to  Jesus  Christ  refuse  when  they 
hear  His  voice  summoning  them  to  take 
possession  of  the  world  in  His  name?  The 
motive  that  the  Church    must  bring   home  to 


144  THE  IMPELLING  MOTIVE— 

the  hearts  and  consciences  of  men  is  the 
motive  of  personal  obligation  to  Jesus  Christ. 
And  the  Church  must  cease  being  content  to 
live  on  the  outskirts  of  Christianity — its  mem- 
bers must  enter  in  and  possess  the  land.  The 
savage  may  own  a  territory  rich  in  coal  and 
iron  and  gold,  but  because  he  knows  not  how 
to  sink  a  shaft,  and  is  too  indolent  to  toil,  he 
lives  on  the  surface,  naked  and  squalid  and 
miserable.  Christianity  is  the  communication 
to  men  of  the  spiritual  power  of  God;  but 
Christians  refuse  to  sink  the  shaft — and  they 
are  but  poor,  ineffective,  naked  degenerates, 
while  the  gold  is  under  their  feet.  If  they  only 
knew  the  meaning  of  the  words :  "  He  that 
abideth  in  Me  and  I  in  him,  the  same  beareth 
much  fruit  ;  for  apart  from  Me  ye  can  do 
nothing,"  then  there  would  be  in  the  Church 
a  mighty,  irresistible  power  which  would  sweep 
over  every  frontier,  and  possess  every  land  in 
the  name  of  Jesus  Christ.  They  would  realise 
that  all  the  power  of  God  was  working  through 
them,  that  all  the  forces  of  the  universe  were 
working  for  them,  that  the  stars  in  their  courses 
were  fighting  on  their  side,  and  that  against  the 
Church  of   God,  glowing   with   His   omnipotent 


"FOR  MY  SAKE"  145 

Spirit,  nothing  could  stand.  It  was  in  the  power 
of  the  ever  present  Lord,  in  the  might  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  that  in  the  early  days  Christianity 
won  its  triumphs.  There  is  no  other  way,  and 
no  other  power,  through  which  Christianity  will 
win  triumphs  to-day. 

The  conquering  power  will  manifest  itself 
when  Christians  again  realise  their  personal  obli- 
gation to  Jesus  Christ.  A  Christendom  in  which 
the  followers  of  Christ  are  dead  to  the  stirring 
of  personal  obligation,  in  which  the  mass  of 
Christians  view  with  indifferent  eyes  the  enter- 
prise of  missions,  in  which  only  a  small  fraction 
of  the  Christian  host  take  any  thought  of 
what  the  glory  of  Christ  demands — such  a 
Christendom  will  never  win  the  world  for 
Christ.  If  only  Christians  would  believe  in 
Christ  ;  would  realise  in  the  experience  of 
their  own  souls  and  their  own  lives  who 
Christ  is,  and  what  Christ  can  do,  and  what 
Christ  demands — then  the  frontiers  would 
disappear,  and  all  lands  be  occupied  in  His 
name.  But  a  nominal  Christianity,  which 
does  not  really  believe  in  Christ,  which  does 
not  see  in  Him  the  Saviour  of  their  own  souls 
and  of  the  whole  world,  which  is  not  therefore 

Won  for  Christ.  J 1 


146  THE  IMPELLING  MOTIVE 

ashamed  to  say,  when  the  universal  command 
sounds  in  their  ears,  "  I  don't  believe  in 
Missions  " — such  a  Christianity  will  not  win  an 
islet,  far  less  a  world.  The  man  who  does  not 
believe  in  missions  is  a  man  who  does  not  really 
believe  in  Christ.  And  the  work  to  which  the 
Church  is  urgently  called  is  to  make  the  faith 
of  Christ  again  live  in  the  hearts  and  souls 
of  men.  Then  will  the  power  come  which 
will  win  the  world  for  Jesus  Christ.  Then  will 
that  spiritual  power  which  once  swept  West- 
ward, anon  sweep  Eastward,  until  every  knee 
shall  bow  and  every  tongue  confess  that  Jesus 
Christ  is  Lord. 


"THAT    THE    WORLD    MAY    BELIEVE"— 
THE   CALL  TO  UNION 


The  primal  condition  laid  down  by  Christ — The  citadel 
within  which  unity  is  realised — The  belief  in  the  Incarna- 
tion and  the  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Spirit — Difficulties 
in  way  of  corporate  union — Influence  of  Missions  on  the 
unity  of  the  Church — Necessity  for  an  international  Board 
of  Missions — Christianity  being  saved  on  the  mission- 
field. 


"THAT  THE   WORLD   MAY  BELIEVE"— THE 
CALL  TO   UNION 

r  I  iHE  work  of  evangelising  the  world  is  so 
-■-  great  that  it  can  only  be  effectually 
grappled  by  the  united  forces  of  Christendom. 
What  Christendom  needs  is  to  have  the 
parochial  outlook  replaced  by  the  world-wide 
look.  This  is  the  benefit  which  the  enterprise 
of  missions  confers  on  the  Church.  When 
Christians  see  the  vast  task  that  is  to  be 
accomplished,  then  they  will  see  things  in  the 
right  proportion.  At  present  Christians  con- 
duct a  campaign  against  heathenism,  but  it  is 
a  campaign  in  which  its  forces  are  disunited,  in 
which  there  is  not  one  concerted  plan  of  action, 
which  is  not  animated  by  one  spirit,  and  which 
too  often  subordinates  the  thought  of  the 
triumph  of  Christianity  to  the  thought  of  the 

149 


150     "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

triumph  of  a  denomination.  What  would  be 
thought  of  a  country  which  sent  forth  to  the 
field  to  wage  a  war  against  a  powerful  enemy, 
an  army  which  was  not  under  the  direction  and 
subject  to  the  orders  of  one  commander,  in 
which  the  infantry  was  independent  of  the 
cavalry,  and  the  artillery  independent  of  both? 
Only  ignominious  failure  could  await  such 
an  army.  Yet  the  forces  of  Christendom 
going  forth  to  conquer  the  world  for  Christ 
are  an  army  "  in  which  there  is  no  room 
for  generalship."  The  proof  of  the  power 
of  Christianity  is  that  under  those  condi- 
tions it  has  been  conquering.  The  folly  of 
man  is  not  able,  however  great  the  folly 
may  be,  to  prevent  the  conquering  might  of 
Christianity. 

In  no  circumstance  is  there  such  a  call  sound- 
ing in  the  ear  of  Christendom  as  the  call  which 
comes  from  the  mission-fields  summoning  the 
Churches  to  close  their  ranks.  But  the  call 
*  comes  from  an  infinitely  higher  source.  It 
comes  from  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  On  that 
night  on  which  He  robed  Himself  for  the  great 
sacrifice,  and  when  He  had  already  in  Spirit 
poured  out   His  life   that   the  world   might   be 


—THE  CALL  TO   UNION  151 

saved,  He  prayed  for  His  own,  "  That  they  all 
may  be  one ;  as  Thou,  Father,  art  in  Me,  and 
I  in  Thee,  that  they  also  may  be  one  in  Us :  that 
the  world  may  believe  that  Thou  hast  sent  Me." 
The  yearning  palpitating  in  the  heart  of  Christ 
in  the  supreme  hour  was  the  yearning  that  His 
followers  might  be  one  in  the  love  of  God, 
and  one  in  the  love  one  of  another.  This  was 
the  boon  He  craved  of  the  Father;  it  was  on 
the  fulfilment  of  this  that  it  depended  whether 
the  world  would  believe.  Century  after  century, 
generation  after  generation,  the  great  prayer 
of  the  Lord's  intercession  has  sounded  in  the 
ears  of  men ;  and  from  the  most  excellent 
glory  whither  the  Lord  is  for  us  entered,  the 
ear  of  faith  can  still  hear  the  words  of  that 
prayer,  ringing  as  the  cry  of  Love  alone  can 
ring,  thrilling  with  passionate  yearning,  seeking 
this  one  thing — that  all  who  name  His  name 
may  be  one.  And  yet,  with  that  cry  in  their 
ears  ringing  from  the  upper  chamber,  wafted 
from  the  central  glory,  the  followers  of  Christ 
pay  it  no  heed.  Though  the  Lord,  in  prayer 
to  His  Father  (in  words  the  intensity  of  whose 
solemnity  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  are  addressed 
to  God  and  not   to  man)  makes  it  known  that 


152     "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

the  bringing  of  the  world  to  His  faith  depends 
on  the  unity  of  His  disciples,  yet  there  is  no 
matter  too  trifling,  but  because  of  it  those  who 
call  themselves  by  His  name,  rend  the  Church, 
which  is  His  body,  and  stand  apart  from  each 
other  refusing  to  fulfil  the  very  condition  on 
which  alone  the  world  can  be  won  for  Christ. 
They  appeal  to  their  principles  and  are  deaf  to 
the  voice  of  Christ;  they  root  themselves  in 
ancient  controversies  and  steel  themselves 
against  the  love  of  Christ.  Lacking  the  love 
of  Christ,  they  know  not  the  unity  which  is  in 
Christ.  For  love  is  unity ;  love  cannot  be 
isolated  from  love ;  love  seeing  any  barrier 
separating  from  those  beloved  cannot  rest 
until  the  barriers  be  removed.  Love  throws 
dividing  walls  to  the  ground,  that  heart  may 
speak  to  heart  and  love  may  grow.  But 
Christians  stand  apart,  waging  a  campaign  in 
which  there  is  no  concerted,  united  action, 
because  the  love  of  Christ  is  lukewarm  in  their 
hearts,  because  they  know  not  what  it  is  to 
surrender  the  heart  to  the  love  of  God — the 
atmosphere  in  which  alone  all  who  believe  are 
one.  And  there  is  presented  to  the  world  this 
most  pitiful   and  humbling  spectacle,  Christian 


—THE   CALL  TO  UNION  153 

Churches  with  the  one  hand  making  efforts 
(feeble  efforts,  it  is  true,  for  how  could  it  be 
otherwise?)  to  send  the  gospel  to  the  heathen, 
and  with  the  other  hand  throwing  insuperable 
barriers  in  the  path  of  the  gospel.  For  the 
Lord  declared  that  the  gospel  would  conquer 
when  His  disciples  were  one — and  they  refuse 
to  be  one.  If  ever  there  came  to  the  Churches 
the  call  to  self-examination  and  humiliation  it 
rings  in  their  ears  to-day  from  those  fields 
where  Christianity  is  grappling  with  heathen- 
ism, and  where  Christianity  languishes  because 
Christians  refuse  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  Christ, 
refuse  to  obey  the  command  of  Christ,  and 
refuse  to  fulfil  the  condition  on  which  the 
world  can  be  won  for  Christ.  At  one  and  the 
same  time  Christendom  proffers  heathenism 
the  bread  of  life  and  the  poison  of  sectarianism  ! 
"  You  urge  me,"  says  one,  "  to  become  a 
Christian.  Which  of  the  numberless  forms  of 
Christians  shall  I  accept?  I  shall  always  be  a 
Christ-man,  but  never  a  Christian."  Such  is  the 
bewildered  feeling  of  heathendom  in  face  of 
our  rent  and  divided  Christianity. 

Is    there,    then,    a    remedy   for   this  pitiable 
condition  which  saps  the  energy  and  blunts  the 


154    "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

weapons    of  Christianity  ?     Is    there   a  citadel 
within   which   the   divergent  forces  of  Christi- 
anity  can  concentrate,   and  out   of    which  the 
conquering  power  can  go  forth — the  conquering 
power    of    unity.     If    the    divergence   between 
Christians  be  in  matters  so  great  that  because 
of  them  they  can  never  bring  together  into  one 
army  their  present  woefully  divided  and  scat- 
tered forces,  then  we  must  sorrowfully  acquiesce 
in  the   present   condition   of   division  and   sec- 
tarian isolation,  and  abandon  for  ever  the  hope 
of  winning  the  world  for  God  and  His  Christ. 
But,   thank   God,   we   are   not  shut   up   to   the 
acceptance  of  that  conclusion  ;  we  are  not  forced 
because   of    it   to   abandon   our   ideal   and   our 
dream — not  our  ideal,  but  the  ideal  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.     For  if  we  examine  what  is  vital 
and  operative  in  the  Christian  Churches  we  will 
find  that  beneath  all  their  divergencies  they  are 
really   one.     And  their  condition  of  separation 
is   not   due   to    the    eternal   and   unchangeable 
principles  which  lie  at  the  root  of  Christianity, 
but  is  wholly  due  to  minor  matters  of    detail, 
to   questions    of   organisation   and   procedure — 
things  which  are  of  little  import  and  would  not 
in  themselves  save  the  soul  of  even  a  titmouse. 


—THE   CALL  TO  UNION  155 

It  is  not  because  of  great  principles  that 
Christians  stand  apart ;  it  is  because  of  passions 
which  have  no  root  in  Christianity,  but  which 
have  their  roots  in  fallen  human  nature. 

If  we  look  at  the  Christian  Church  we  shall 
find  that  beneath  all  changes  and  difference 
there  are  some  things  regarding  which 
Christians  in  all  ages  were  at  one.  Though 
it  be  true  that  there  have  come  changes  in 
the  conceptions  of  Christianity  which  have 
amounted  almost  to  a  revolution,  and  though  in 
our  own  time  we  have  witnessed  such  changes 
as,  in  the  words  of  the  late  Professor  James, 
"make  the  thought  of  a  past  generation  seem 
as  foreign  to  its  successor  as  if  it  were  the 
expression  of  a  different  race  of  men,"  yet 
there  have  been  two  great  truths  at  the 
heart  of  Christianity  which  are  unchanged 
and  unchangeable.  The  one  is  the  coming  of 
God  to  men  in  the  mystery  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, and  the  other  the  rendering  up  of  the 
lives  of  men  to  God  through  the  indwelling 
and  the  operation  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  It  is 
these  two  truths,  and  all  that  flows  from 
them,  which  form  the  citadel  within  which 
all  Christians  are  one.     The  Lord  Jesus  Christ 


156     "  THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE  " 

has  stood  for  nineteen  centuries  before  the 
eyes  of  men,  and  as  they  gazed  on  Him,  and 
listened  to  His  words,  there  has  ever  come 
to  their  hearts  such  an  overwhelming  im- 
pression of  His  moral  loveliness,  of  His 
perfect  love,  of  His  transcendent  ideal,  that 
slowly,  and  at  times  reluctantly,  the  lips  of 
each  succeeding  generation  have  joined  in  the 
adoring  words,  "  Thou  art  the  King  of  Glory, 
O  Christ  ;  Thou  art  the  everlasting  Son  of 
the  Father."  Christ  is  so  great,  so  high  above 
humanity,  that  there  is  no  way  of  accounting 
for  Him  but  this — "  God  was  in  Christ." 
From  that  flows  the  gospel  of  reconciliation, 
and  the  gospel  of  regeneration.  And  from 
that  also  flows  the  great  truth  of  the  opera- 
tion of  God  in  human  hearts  through  the 
Holy  Ghost.  The  waters  of  life  are  not  borne 
in  clouds  above  our  heads,  while  our  lips  are 
parched  and  we  perish ;  but  they  condense 
and  flow  down  into  the  waste  places,  coming 
even  to  our  lips,  flowing  into  our  inmost  lives, 
renewing  heart  and  soul  into  the  image  of 
God.  That  is  the  everlasting,  the  unchange- 
able gospel.  Every  Church  holds  these  great 
truths.      They     are     the     mainspring     of     all 


—THE   CALL  TO  UNION  157 

Christian  activity,  the  motive  power  of  all 
progress.  The  matters  regarding  which  Chris- 
tians differ  are  microscopic ;  the  truths  regard- 
ing which  they  are  at  one  are  the  truths  which 
fill  heaven  and  earth  with  splendour — which 
make  humanity  glow  with  the  life  which  is 
divine.  Beneath  the  surface  Christianity  is 
really  one. 

What  Christendom  must  do,  then,  if  it  is  to 
impress  on  the  whole  world  the  life  and  the 
power  of  Jesus  Christ,  is  to  fall  back  on  those 
great  facts  which  are  alone  of  vital  import 
to  Christianity.  All  whose  lips  have  been 
constrained  to  say  to  Jesus,  "  Thou  art  the 
Son  of  God" — these  are  united  in  the  bonds  of 
one  faith,  one  baptism,  one  hope  of  their 
calling.  The  differences  between  them  in 
regard  to  other  matters  are  nothing  compared 
to  the  difference  which  separates  them  from 
heathenism  and  from  the  unbelieving  world. 
It  is  this  essential  unity  which  Christendom 
is  called  upon  to  make  visible  and  operative 
so  that  the  world  beholding  it  may  at  last 
believe.  What  Christianity  is  called  to  do  is 
not  to  plant  in  the  midst  of  heathenism  a 
number  of  various  and  isolated  denominations, 


158    "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

but  to  plant  "one  Church  under  the  sole 
control  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  governed  by 
the  Word  of  the  living  God,  and  led  by  His 
guiding  Spirit."  And  the  foundation  on  which 
that  one  Church  has  been  built  in  all  ages  is 
one — the  truth  of  the  Incarnation  ;  and  against 
the  Church  built  on  that  rock  "  the  gates  of 
hell  shall  not  prevail."  It  is  to  the  building 
of  the  Church  on  that  one  Rock  that  Chris- 
tianity is  called.     That  is  its  essential  unity. 

There  are  in  the  present  stage  of  the 
Church's  development  various  difficulties  which 
are  seen  by  many  standing  in  the  way  of  a 
visible  embodiment  in  one  united  Church  of 
this  great  underlying  unity.  They  fear  that 
such  a  union  would  only  be  a  union  on  the 
^  basis  of  the  "  least  common  denominator,"  and 
they  prefer  to  think  of  a  union  based  not  on 
"  compromises  for  the  sake  of  peace,  but  com- 
prehension  for   the   sake   of   truth." 

Besides  these  great  common  truths,  there 
are  other  things  which  many  Christians  deem 
vital,  and  they  fear  lest,  through  union  with 
Churches  which  do  not  lay  the  same  emphasis 
on  them,  they  might  be  relegated  to  the  plane 
of  comparative  indifference.      But  these  fears 


—THE   CALL  TO   UNION  159 

and  difficulties  are  based  on  a  singular  misap- 
prehension. For  surely  the  ideal  of  a  united 
Church,  which  the  eyes  of  the  devout  see  in  the 
future,  is  not  a  Church  impoverished  but  a 
Church  enriched.  What  men  dream  of  is  a 
Church  which  will  gather  into  itself  all  the  trea- 
sures of  orderliness,  of  reverence,  of  devotion,  of 
self-sacrifice,  at  present  existing  in  the  separate 
Churches,  and  which  having  ascertained  the 
element  of  truth  in  conflicting  systems,  will 
embrace  them  in  a  richer  and  higher  unity. 
Surely  a  way  can  be  found  for  reconciling 
those  differences  with  the  great  unity  which 
exists.  It  is  not  a  Church  of  complete 
uniformity  in  ritual  and  organisation  that  the 
future  will  evolve,  but  a  Church  which,  re- 
posing on  its  essential  unity,  will  embrace  the 
largest  diversity  and  afford  the  fullest  freedom 
in  non-essentials.  But  as  yet  the  Churches 
are  far  from  the  realisation  of  this  ideal. 
They  exhort  each  other  to  penitence  and 
prayer — "to  penitence  because  we  have  all 
in  various  ways,  as  bodies  and  as  individuals, 
contributed  to  produce  and  perpetuate  differ- 
ences ;  and  to  prayer  because  what  we  all 
alike   need  is  that  God  should  open  our  minds 


160    "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

and  hearts  to  receive,  without  prejudice,  the 
gradual  revelation  of  His  will  as  to  the  ways 
by  which  we  are  to  be  drawn  together."  But 
penitence  that  does  not  forsake  the  sins  pro- 
fessedly repented  of  is  mockery ;  and  prayer 
for  unity,  without  striving  after  it,  is  worse 
than  unreal.  Meanwhile  a  perishing  world 
believes  not  because  of  the  schisms  that 
devastate  the  Church  and  the  divisions  which 
dissipate   its   energy. 

This  is  the  great  reflex  influence  which  the 
missionary  enterprise  is  to  wield  on  the 
Churches  at  home.  From  the  circumference, 
from  the  far-flung  battle-line,  there  comes  the 
call  which  will  compel  Christendom  to  close  its 
ranks  in  fear  of  a  common  enemy.  If  corporate 
union  be  yet  far  off,  if  as  yet  we  have  only 
caught  echoes  of  the  music  that  is  far  ahead, 
still  in  the  mission-fields  the  way  is  being 
rapidly  prepared  for  the  coming  day.  There 
the  differences  between  Churches  become 
obliterated  in  the  comradeship  of  a  common 
warfare.  Already  some  advance  has  been  made 
towards  allotting  geographical  spheres  to 
different  missions,  i-fty  years  ago  Bishop 
Selwyn    in    the    Pacific    Islands    set    a    noble 


—THE   CALL  TO   UNION  161 

example  in  this  respect.  He  drew  up  a  scheme 
by  which  the  different  islands  were  assigned  to 
different  societies.  "Let  there  be  no  strife,  I 
pray  thee,  between  my  herdmen  and  thy 
herdmen,"  concluded  the  Bishop,  and  strife 
has  been  avoided  up  to  the  present  day.  But 
it  has,  alas  !  not  been  so  everywhere.  Where 
Christian  missions  have  been  at  work,  there 
frequently  other  missions  have  pressed  in,  though 
hundreds  of  millions  of  souls  are  elsewhere 
without  the  knowledge  of  God.  If  to-day  the 
missionary  activities  of  the  Churches  were 
re-arranged  and  re-distributed,  if  overlapping 
were  prevented  and  all  collision  between  various 
missions  made  impossible,  it  would  mean  that 
the  effective  power  of  Christianity  in  the 
mission-fields  would  be  doubled  even  though 
not  even  one  additional  missionary  were  pro- 
vided. 

One  great  step  towards  the  effective  realisa- 
tion of  that  underlying  unity  which  exists  at 
the  heart  of  Christendom  would  be  the  establish- 
ment of  an  International  Board  of  Missions 
which  would  allot  the  different  mission  spheres, 
allocate  the  unoccupied  lands  among  the 
Churches,  and  so  distribute  the  forces  of  Chris- 

Won  for  Christ  12 


162    "THAT  THE  WOKLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

tianity  that  no  section  of  the  world  would  be 
left  without  the  witness  of  Jesus  Christ  within 
it.  Such  a  Board  would  doubtless  recommend 
the  withdrawal  of  some  agencies  from  particular 
districts  and  their  removal  to  other  districts. 
The  need  of  this  is  most  pressing  in  China, 
where  the  missionary  societies  concentrated 
their  work  in  the  five  treaty  ports  which  were 
alone  open  to  them  from  1841  to  1862.  In  these 
ports  there  are  now  a  disproportionate  number 
of  missions,  and  the  call  is  urgent  for  a 
re-distribution  of  the  missionary  forces  as  part 
of  a  comprehensive  plan  for  occupying  the 
whole  world.  Questions  of  property  would 
doubtless  arise.  But  all  such  questions  would 
be  easy  of  adjustment  when  the  Churches  in 
the  West  realised  that  property  in  the  mission- 
field  is  not  held  for  their  benefit  but  for  the 
benefit  of  the  native  Church.  If  their  with- 
drawal meant  greater  progress  of  the  Church 
elsewhere,  it  would  not  mean  any  loss  whatever 
to  the  Church  of  Christ.  For  the  property 
would  only  pass  from  Church  to  Church  for  the 
greater  glory  of  God.  An  International  Board 
such  as  this  would  supply  the  element  of 
generalship     to     the    great     campaign    which 


—THE   CALL  TO  UNION  163 

Christianity  carries  on  against  heathenism, 
and  would  be  a  demonstration  of  the  unity  of 
spirit  underlying  the  diversities  of  Christian 
Churches.  Such  a  Board  could  divide  the  un- 
occupied regions  among  the  Churches  and 
societies  allocating  to  each  a  district  pro- 
portionate to  its  resources,  laying  it  as  a  duty 
upon  their  hearts  and  consciences  that  they 
effectively  occupy  it  for  the  glory  of  Jesus 
Christ.  No  Church,  with  the  spirit  of  Christ 
within  it,  could  in  honour  refuse  the  call. 
Only  thus  can  all  the  world  be  brought  within 
the  hearing  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ. 

In  the  mission-fields  there  is  already  a  great 
measure  of  co-operation  between  the  Churches. 
And  union  and  co-operation  once  begun  will  not 
stop  there.  There  is  a  great  field  for  the  united 
efforts  of  the  Churches — in  the  establishing  of 
Christian  colleges  and  universities,  in  the  train- 
ing of  missionaries,  in  the  developing  of  the 
spirit  of  comity  and  loyalty  one  to  another. 
Every  successful  combined  effort  of  the  Churches 
is  a  step  towards  that  day  when  Christians 
shall  be  one.  The  mission-field  has  rung  the 
knell  of  the  policy  of  isolation.  God  has  so 
created  the  world  that  nothing  in  that  world 


164     "THAT  THE  WORLD  MAY  BELIEVE" 

will  grow  and  prosper  in  a  condition  of  isolation. 
Separate  a  man  from  his  fellows  and  he 
atrophies.  Separate  a  Church  from  Christen- 
dom and  its  isolation  is  not  splendid — it  is 
pathetic.  It  spells  death.  This  is  the  knowledge 
into  which  the  Churches  slowly  are  growing. 
They  are  groping  their  way  towards  the  inner 
citadel  of  union.  Bitterness  is  already  dead. 
And  if  there  be  those  who  still  desire  to 
continue  nursing  an  ancient  wrath  to  keep  it 
warm,  and  so  would  justify  their  separation 
from  their  fellow  Christians,  there  are  two 
voices  summoning  them  to  arise  and  save 
themselves  by  losing  themselves  in  the  common 
life  of  Christendom.  The  one  voice  is  the  voice 
of  the  living  Lord — and  that  voice,  if  they  are 
to  be  loyal,  they  dare  not  gainsay;  and  the 
other  voice  is  the  voice  that  comes  wafted  in 
from  the  mission-fields  pleading  with  the 
Churches  to  gird  themselves  to  the  greatest 
work  God  ever  committed  to  men,  to  cease 
their  contendings  about  things  of  little  import, 
to  close  their  ranks  and  advance  in  one  solid 
army  on  the  territories  of  darkness  and  of 
death.  A  work  so  great,  so  transcending  human 
effort,  can  only  be  done  by  a  united  Christendom. 


—THE   CALL  TO  UNION  165 

When  the  spirit  of  missionary  enthusiasm 
shall  break  through  the  Churches,  and  the  eyes 
shall  see  the  greatness  of  the  work,  and  the 
labour  languishing  because  the  labourers  are 
not  animated  by  one  spirit  and  one  purpose, 
then  will  there  rise  at  home  what  already  has 
arisen  abroad,  the  passionate  cry  for  the  unity 
of  the  Church,  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  condition 
on  which  alone  the  world  will  believe.  It  is 
thus  on  the  mission-fields  that  the  future  of 
Christianity  is  being  evolved,  that  Christianity 
is  being  saved. 


THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 


The  open  doors — The  opened  ways — The  opened  hearts 
of  the  nations  —  The  working  of  God  —  The  plastic 
condition  of  non-Christian  nations — Lost  opportunities 
in  Africa — Will  the  opportunity  be  lost  now  ? — Will  the 
West  deprive  the  East  of  its  ancient  faiths  without  giv- 
ing a  higher  ? — Christianity's  great  opportunity  to  develop 
itself  in  the  West — "  Now  let  me  burn  out  for  God." 


XI 


THE   GREAT   OPPORTUNITY 

WE  have  seen  how  stupendous  this  work 
is  which  remains  for  the  Church  to  do 
for  the  glory  of  Christ.  As  the  illimitable  fields 
rise  before  the  inner  eye,  there  come  to  the 
lips  the  words,  "Lord,  who  is  sufficient  for 
these  things?"  It  remains  only  to  show  how 
in  the  good  Providence  of  God  there  has 
never  in  the  history  of  the  world  been  a  time 
of  so  great  opportunity  as  that  in  which  we 
live.  It  was  in  a  world  which  had  been  pre- 
pared for  it  that  Christianity  appeared  and 
spread  and  conquered  until  the  Mediterranean 
became  a  sea  in  the  midst  of  a  Christian  world  ; 
and  to-day  there  comes  the  fulness  of  another 
long  period  of  preparation,  when  the  Pacific 
and  the  Indian  Oceans  and  the  South  Seas 
are  destined,  as  its  fruit,  to  become  girt  by 
nought  but  Christian  countries. 

169 


170         THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 

Not  so  long  ago  the  world  was  full  of  closed 
lands,  at  whose  doors  Christianity  knocked  in 
vain.  In  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century 
Xavier  died  in  a  transport  of  longing  to  enter 
the  great  closed  land  of  China.  At  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  century  Carey  could  only  gain 
access  to  India  by  voyaging  hither  in  a  Dutch 
ship  —  England,  that  country  of  the  Bible, 
denying  him  a  passage.  In  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century  Henry  Martyn  heard 
the  call  of  God  summoning  him  to  India,  but 
missionaries  were  not  allowed  by  the  East 
India  Company  to  enter  India  —  it  was  still  a 
closed  land.  But  they  sent  chaplains !  And  as 
a  chaplain  Henry  Martyn  gained  entrance  to 
India — a  missionary  in  the  guise  of  a  chaplain ! 
Only  a  hundred  years  ago,  but  already  it  all 
sounds  to  us  as  we  iread — that  hostility  of  a 
Christian  nation  to  the  propagation  of  the 
religion  it  professed,  that  national  denial  of 
the  claim  of  Jesus  Christ  to  be  King  of  kings 
and  Lord  of  lords — as  if  we  were  reading  of 
the  acts  and  policy  of  some  strange,  outlandish 
savage  tribe.  To-day  that  condition  of  things 
is  well-nigh  unthinkable.  Africa  is  no  longer 
an  unknown  and  dark  world.     Livingstone  has 


THE   GREAT  OPPORTUNITY  171 

led  the  way  though  its  morasses  and  fever- 
swamps  opening  up  the  path  for  the  gospel 
of  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  his  own  words,  "  the 
end  of  the  geographical  feat "  has  been  "  the 
beginning  of  the  Christian  enterprise."  All 
over  the  world  every  land  is  open,  and  the 
small  sections  of  it  which  may  be  still  closed 
to  the  missionaries  are  only  closed  because 
Christianity  has  not  yet  vigorously  knocked 
at  the  door. 

And  the  doors  are  not  only  now  wide  open, 
but  they  are  moreover  brought  within  our 
easy  reach.  The  world  has  grown  small.  A 
hundred  years  ago  the  Hebrides  were  as  far 
from  Edinburgh  as  the  heart  of  Africa  is 
from  it  to-day.  The  Somali  is  our  neighbour 
now  in  the  geographical  sense  in  which  the 
dweller  in  the  Isle  of  Skye  was  a  neighbour 
to  London  two  generations  ago.  The  world 
instead  of  being  filled  by  races  severed  from 
each  other  by  seas  and  impassable  mountain 
barriers,  has  been  reduced  to  a  unity  in  which 
we  can  say  of  no  race  that  it  is  not  our 
neighbour.  The  African  is  at  our  doors  ;  the 
Chinaman  is  but  a  few  days'  journey  away. 
We  can  send  him  a   message   in   the   morning 


172  THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 

and  he  will  receive  it  before  breakfast.  In  all 
this  is  the  hand  of  God.  The  Roman  laid 
his  roads  and  drew  them  straight  over  hill 
and  plain ;  his  purpose  was  that  his  legions 
might  sweep  over  them  and  demolish  any  foe 
that  might  dispute  his  sway;  but  the  purpose 
of  God  was  that  over  these  roads  the  mes- 
sengers of  the  Cross  might  run  with  the 
great  tidings  of  salvation.  And  in  the  fulness 
of  time  along  the  Roman  roads  there  swept 
to  the  utmost  corners  of  that  ancient  world 
the  vivifying  message,  and  hearts  risen  from 
the  dead  took  up  the  ancient  refrain,  "  How 
beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of 
him  that  bringeth  good  tidings."  And  the 
purpose  of  God  abideth  ever  the  same.  When 
the  steamship  made  its  first  voyage,  when  the 
first  engine  ran  on  the  rails,  when  the  first 
message  was  flashed  beneath  the  waves — men 
thought  only  of  commerce,  of  imperial  power, 
of  the  enrichment  of  life.  But  these  things 
God  purposed  as  the  means  through  which  the 
gospel  of  His  Son  should  hasten  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth.  And  to-day  they  bring  the 
formerly  closed  lands  to  our  doors.  Along 
these   the  message    of    God    runs    thrilling    to 


THE   GREAT  OPPORTUNITY  173 

the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth.  As  it  was 
with  the  Roman  roads,  so  is  it  to-day  with 
the  inventions  of  men.  They  are  potent  in- 
struments for  the  evangelisation  of  the  world, 
polished  shafts  in  the  Christian  armoury. 
What  was  impossible  for  the  generations  before 
us,  they  make  not  only  possible  but  easy.  In 
the  universe  which  God  made,  the  seeing  eye 
can  still  discern  the  hand  of  God  shaping  and 
moulding  and  directing  its  forces  to  the  end 
that  what  is  highest  may  put  forth  its  power 
and  rule.  It  is  when  the  material  becomes 
the  instrument  of  the  ideal  that  it  fulfils  the 
thought  and  purpose  of  God.  The  missionary 
enterprise  is  the  ideal  in  the  hearts  of  men, 
the  element  which  is  all  unselfishness,  marred 
by  no  self-interest,  and  the  forces  of  the 
world  are  directed  by  God  to  this  end — the 
triumph  of  the  Ideal. 

What  a  wonder  it  all  is  :  the  closed  doors 
flung  wide  open;  the  way  to  the  open  doors 
made  ready  and  all-prepared — and  all  within 
one  hundred  years  !  We  are  so  accustomed  to 
tracing  out  and  demonstrating  the  working 
and  the  Providence  of  God  a  thousand  or 
two  thousand  years  ago,  that  we  are  blind   to 


174  THE   GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 

the  working  of  the  hand  of  God  all  round 
about  us  in  our  own  day.  Yet  so  it  is.  And 
not  only  has  all  this  preparation  been  made — 
preparation  which  cannot  in  a  world  ruled  by 
God  fail  of  its  high  purpose — but  in  those  coun- 
tries to  which  the  open  doors  now  give  wide 
access,  there  the  hearts  of  the  nations  have 
been  opened  for  the  coming  of  the  great  evangel 
of  love.  When  we  were  prepared  to  bring  the 
true  evangel,  then  was  the  way  prepared  for 
our  going  and  the  door  opened  for  our  receiv- 
ing. In  the  days  that  are  past  we  were  not 
prepared  to  bear  the  true  evangel.  We  had 
the  treasure  but  we  did  not  comprehend  its 
true  power  and  its  true  glory.  We  thought  the 
gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  was  a  matter  of  words 
and  doctrines  and  legal  systems.  We  are 
only  now  realising  that  it  is  the  communication 
of  the  love  of  God  to  the  hearts  of  men ;  that 
Christianity  is  a  spiritual  power  and  impulse 
stirring  all  that  is  great  and  noble  in  the  soul, 
making  not  only  righteousness  a  dream  but 
making  it  a  dream  realised  in  hearts  trans- 
formed into  the  image  of  God.  Christianity 
is  indigenous  in  every  land  and  among  every 
race  because   Christianity  is  the   love   of   God 


THE   GREAT  OPPORTUNITY  175 

outflowing  to  men — and  that  primal  feeling 
of  love  every  race  knows.  But  it  is  only  in 
this  last  generation  that  we  have  realised 
it.  In  times  of  strife  Christianity  was  thought 
of  as  a  system  which  put  iron  in  the  blood. 
When  we  pierced  down  to  the  heart  of 
Christianity,  felt  its  throb  again,  realised  that 
it  was  the  love  of  God  shed  abroad  in  our 
hearts  by  the  Holy  Spirit  —  then  the  way 
opened  out  for  the  sending  of  the  gospel  to 
the  heathen  world,  and  the  nations  are  moved 
at  its  approach  as  if  they,  too,  were  prepared 
for  its  coming. 

The  non-Christian  world  to-day  presents  an 
opportunity  to  the  Christian  Church  such  as 
never  before.  For  the  nations  of  the  East  are 
waking  out  of  the  sleep  of  ages.  A  ferment 
seems  to  have  taken  possession  of  the  ancient 
races.  No  longer  with  their  faces  towards  the 
glories  of  a  dead  past,  they  have  turned  towards 
the  future  with  their  hearts  vibrating  with  the 
spirit  of  the  modern  world.  China  has  been 
transformed,  and  its  whole  social  life  has  been 
revolutionised.  To-day  it  is  in  the  midst  of 
flux  and  change,  and  therefore  to-day  it  is 
plastic  in  the  hands  of  the  Christian  moulders 


176  THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 

— if  they  be  forthcoming.  But  if  in  the  time 
of  its  seeking  there  be  not  the  guide  to  the 
truth,  who  knows  what  half-truth  it  may 
accept,  and  accepting,  solidify  again  into  its 
ancient  conservatism  ?  In  these  years  there  lies 
the  great  opportunity  of  Christianity  in  China. 
If  in  its  transitional  state,  plastic  with  the 
ferment  of  stirring  and  conflicting  desires, 
Christianity  be  unable  to  make  an  impression 
on  it,  then  the  day  of  opportunity  will  be  past. 
It  is  the  same  in  Japan,  in  Persia,  in  Korea,  in 
Turkey.  The  next  ten  years  will  show  whether 
in  the  making  of  the  new  great  powers  in  the 
East  Christianity  will  have  the  predominant 
influence.  When  these  nations  develop  their 
latent  energies  and  organise  their  forces, 
much  of  the  destinies  of  the  world  will  be  in 
their  hands.  If  the  tide  set  not  towards  Chris- 
tianity now,  it  will  presently  set  against  it. 
Therefore  the  call  is  urgent  to  the  Church  to 
enter  in  and  possess  these  lands.  If  it  is  to  be 
ever,  it  must  be  now. 

Whether  we  will  or  not,  out  of  the  contact 
with  the  West  the  ancient  faiths  of  the  East 
crumble.  The  coming  of  Western  science  means 
the  deserting  of  the  ancient  shrines.     Shall  we 


THE   GKEAT   OPPORTUNITY  177 

give  the  East  our  material  advantages,  our 
science,  and  our  knowledge  of  Nature  without 
the  great  moral  principles  and  religious  aspira- 
tions and  motives  which  control  these  forces 
in  the  West  ?  In  India  secular  education  is  the 
national  system ;  China  and  Japan  are  estab- 
lishing similar  systems.  Shall  the  result  of  the 
West  coming  to  the  East  be  the  development 
of  nations  of  secularists,  freed  from  the  ancient 
religious  and  social  restraints,  with  no  higher  re- 
straints replacing  them,  left  "  without  discipline, 
without  contentment,  and  without  God  "  ?  Then, 
surely  if  that  be  the  result  of  the  impact  of 
the  West  on  the  East,  the  East  will  have  cause 
to  curse  the  West.  Lest  that  dire  result  should 
accrue,  Christianity  must  bring  its  power  fully 
to  bear  now.  If  the  power  of  Science  is  in 
the  East  to  have  the  restraints  of  Christian 
morality,  the  Churches  must  act  now. 

In  India  the  out-caste  races  are  eager  to 
receive  Christianity.  While  Christianity  is 
tarrying,  Hinduism  and  Islam  are  gathering  in 
the  pariahs — profiting  by  their  unrest.  There 
are  mass  movements  towards  Christianity;  but 
teachers  and  evangelists  are  not  forthcoming. 
These   others   have  no   lack   of  reapers  in  the 

Won  for  Christ.  13 


178  THE  GREAT  OPPORTUNITY 

harvest-fields;  is  it  the  case  that  Christ  will 
continue  to  call  in  vain?  Of  old  a  multitude 
no  man  can  number  passed  through  fire  for 
His  sake,  meeting  death  joyously,  deeming  life 
well  lost  if  they  could  but  win  His  smile  !  Is 
the  power  dead — the  love,  the  devotion,  the 
passionate  adoration  ?  Will  Mohammed  find 
multitudes  responding  to  his  call,  and  Christ 
call  in  vain? 

It  is  a  dread  responsibility  to  suffer  the  day 
of  opportunity  to  pass.  In  a  measure  we  have 
suffered  it  to  pass  in  Africa.  The  pagan  tribes 
were  there  ready  to  welcome  any  deliverer 
from  the  spiritual  terrors  in  which  they  lived. 
The  emissaries  of  Islam  came,  and  Africa  is 
now  being  steeled  against  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ.  Races  which  might  have  grown  into 
the  measure  of  the  stature  of  Christ  have 
solidified  into  Pharisaism.  The  day  of  oppor- 
tunity was  let  slip.  Will  it  be  the  same  in 
China,  in  India,  in  the  near  East?  If  these 
are  to  be  saved  from  the  fate  of  Africa, 
Christianity  must  act  now. 

For  Christianity's  own  sake,  in  these  lands 
of  the  West  the  Churches  must  put  forth  their 
full  power  now.     The   power  of  the  Churches 


THE   GREAT  OPPORTUNITY  179 

in  the  West  is  being  sapped  by  luxury  and 
self-indulgence  and  the  love  of  this  present 
world.  To  be  saved  the  Churches  need  the 
bracing  of  a  great  struggle — the  putting  forth 
of  their  energies  in  the  doing  of  a  great  work. 
Wars  have  ceased,  great  causes  no  longer  stir 
men,  and  humanity  needs  some  moral  equivalent 
for  the  sacrifices  and  heroism  of  war.  Here  is 
that  great  moral  equivalent.  Here  is  a  field 
for  self-sacrifice,  for  heroism,  for  conflict.  Here 
is  a  masterful  mission  for  strong  men.  Through 
the  Churches  will  pass  the  stirring  of  a  new 
breath  of  life,  when  they  will  hear  the  voice 
of  the  Lord  calling  them  to  go  forth  at  once 
and  leave  no  land  without  the  witness  of  the 
gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  no  citadel  of  ancient 
evil  without  attack ;  and  all  that  is  noble  and 
heroic  will  rise  up  and  brace  itself  for  world- 
wide conquest.  If  this  work  were  easy  it  would 
make  no  appeal ;  it  is  because  it  is  difficult,  to 
human  eyes  impossible,  that  its  call  comes 
compellingly  to  the  strong.  Only  through  it 
shall  Christianity  save  itself.  When  the  blood 
ceases  to  circulate  to  the  extremities  of  the 
body  death  is  near — "the  missionary  activities 
of  the  Church  are  the  circulation  of  its  blood." 


180  THE  GREAT   OPPORTUNITY 

There  never  has  been  a  day  of  opportunity- 
like  this  in  the  history  of  the  Church  and  the 
world.  The  way  is  open ;  the  door  is  open ; 
the  hearts  of  the  nations  are  open.  Will  the 
Churches  rise  to  the  great  call  which  summons 
them?  Will  they,  failing  to  obey  Christ,  and 
failing  to  communicate  Him,  themselves  lose 
Him?  Is  the  element  of  the  heroic  still 
vigorous  in  Christianity?  Does  Christ  still 
stir  the  hearts  of  His  people  so  that  they  are 
willing  to  die  for  Him? 

"  A  people  is  upon  thee  loving  death  as  thou 
lovest  life"  was  the  message  of  the  Moham- 
medan of  old  to  his  enemy.  Is  there  still  in 
Christendom  the  spirit  which  loves  death  for 
Christ's  sake?  If  there  be,  then  in  this,  the 
great  day  of  opportunity,  the  tide  of  the  world's 
destiny  will  be  turned  towards  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  And  it  will  be  turned.  For  the  Spirit 
is  still  in  the  midst  of  the  Church,  and  until 
the  end  adoring  lips  will  cry — 

"Now  let  me  burn  out  for  God." 


IT  SHALL  BE  WON— NIL  DESPERANDUM 
CHRIS  TO   DUCE 


Mood  of  pessimism — Mood  of  optimism — The  three  great 
forces  :  Unity,  Prayer,  Consecration — The  day  of  triumph 
breaking  over  all  lands. 


XII 

IT  SHALL  BE   WON— NIL  DESPERANDUM 
CHRIS  TO  DUCE 

f  I  lHESE  pages  will  have  been  written  in 
-*-  vain  unless  the  reader  has  realised  the 
overwhelming  magnitude  of  this  great  work 
of  winning  the  world  for  Jesus  Christ,  and 
the  hopelessness  of  it  unless  Christendom 
bestirs  itself  and  puts  forth  the  fulness  of 
its  power  in  these  present  days.  There  are 
times  when  the  eager  spirit,  seeing  the  goal 
so  far  remote,  and  the  barriers  so  insuperable 
to  human  vision  barring  the  way,  suffers 
itself  to  be  clouded  by  the  mood  of  despair. 
It  is  hard  to  go  on  tugging  at  the  dull, 
mechanic  oar  when  for  all  the  tugging  the 
port  seems  never  any  nearer.  But  there  are 
other  times  when  there  comes  to  the  soul 
the   overmastering  impression  that  this   work 

183 


184  IT  SHALL  BE  WON— 

is  not  doomed  to  failure,  and  that  the  day  of 
victory  is  rapidly  approaching.  And  that  was 
the  impression  which  stamped  itself  indelibly 
on  those  who  felt  the  rising  tide  of  spiritual 
power  which  swept  through  the  World  Mis- 
sionary Conference.  That  Conference  marked 
a  great  stage  in  the  onward  march  of  Christi- 
anity to  conquer  the  world ;  it  marked  also 
the  changed  spirit  which  animates  Christianity. 
There  have  been  other  conferences  —  great 
(Ecumenical  Councils — in  the  past.  But  these 
were  not  like  this.  In  these,  doctrines  were 
debated,  often  in  anger,  and  dogmas  were 
tossed  to  and  fro  amid  scenes  of  incredible 
bitterness.  But  in  this  Conference  it  was  not 
theories  which  were  debated ;  nothing  found 
a  place  but  the  great  practical  question  of 
how  the  world  was  to  be  won  for  the 
Christian  ideal.  And  as  meeting  succeeded 
meeting  the  impression  grew  that  behind 
this  work  there  was  the  power  of  the 
living  and  omnipotent  God,  and  that  it  must 
prevail.  Again  and  again  the  words  of  the 
greatest  of  missionaries  rose  to  the  lips  :  "  If 
God  be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us?" 

There  were  three  things  which  brought  this 


NIL  DESPERANDUM  CHRISTO  DUCE    185 

feeling  of  Christianity's  conquering  power  and 
impressed  it  indelibly  on  the  soul.  And  they 
were  these :  the  power  of  unity,  the  power 
of  prayer,  and  the  power  of  the  consecrated 
spirit. 

1.   Unity.      We    have    seen   how   Christ    laid 

it   down   as   the    primal    condition   of   winning 

the  world  that  His  followers  should  be  united 

in  one,  and  we  have  seen  also  how  the  work 

has   been   sore   let   and   hindered  because   this 

condition  has  not  been  fulfilled  by  the  Church. 

In   the   outward    sense   of  visible   embodiment 

there   is   no  unity.     But   in   the   inward   sense, 

all  who  love  the  Lord,  have  found  peace  with 

God,   have   felt   in   their    hearts   the   renewing 

Spirit — all  before  whose  inner  eye,  behind  the 

seen  and  temporal,  there  has  blazed  forth  the 

Unseen,   the    realm    eternal,   the    city  without 

foundations,     and     the     King     immortal     and 

invisible  in  the  midst  of  it — through  that  high 

experience  have  been  made  one,  and  continue 

to   be  one  so  long  as  they  abide  in  that  high 

experience.     Separated   by  the   flimsy  network 

of   words,  they   are   one   in   God.     And   in   the 

measure  in  which   they  are   at   one  with   God 

they  are  at  one  with  each  other.     Nothing  can 


186  IT  SHALL  BE  WON— 

ever  alter  the  fact  that  the  hearts,  by  whatever 
name  they  may  be  called,  which  have  felt  the 
one  love  of  God  possessing  them  are,  in  virtue 
of  that,  one  in  that  experience  which  alone  is 
great.  And  this  feeling  of  oneness  became  so 
great  that  the  soul  realised  not  only  its  unity 
with  those  visible  and  present,  but  its  unity 
also  with  those  still  absent.  They,  having  not 
yet  come  to  a  perfect  knowledge  of  their 
brethren  were  absent ;  but  though  absent,  the 
feeling  grew  that  they  too,  so  far  as  the  love 
of  God  possessed  them,  were  one  with  their 
brethren.  The  souls  that  meet  in  Christ — at 
the  last  nought  can  sever  them  one  from 
another. 

One  of  the  scenes  which  will  live  for  ever 
in  the  memory  and  be  an  inspiration  in  the 
life  was  that  when  his  Grace  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  stood  up  to  address  twelve 
hundred  delegates  from  every  mission-field, 
every  Church,  every  society  of  the  reformed 
faith.  In  every  word  he  spoke  he  was  one 
with  them,  and  they  were  one  with  him  and 
one  with  each  other.  As  the  great  and  noble 
words  flowed  on,  depicting  the  work  of  missions 
as  the  central  work  of   the  Christian   Church, 


NIL  DESPERANDUM  CHRISTO  DUCE    187 

that  great  mass,  in  name  so  divergent,  were 
welded  into  one  by  the  inspiration  of  one 
noble  ideal,  by  the  call  of  one  great  work. 
"  Be  quite  sure,"  concluded  the  Archbishop, 
"that  the  place  of  missions  in  the  life  of  the 
Church  must  be  the  central  place  and  none 
other.  Secure  for  that  thought  the  first  place 
in  our  plans,  our  policy,  our  prayers,  and  then 
— the  issue  is  His  and  not  ours.  But  it  may 
well  be  that,  if  that  came  true,  there  be  some 
standing  here  to-night  who  shall  not  taste  of 
death  till  they  see  here  on  earth  the  kingdom 
of  God  come  with  power."  They  had  come 
hither  from  every  corner  of  the  earth,  men  of 
every  race  and  colour,  from  every  clime,  and, 
hearing,  there  came  to  them  the  power  which 
comes  to  those  who  feel  that  they  are  part  of 
a  great,  united  host,  advancing  in  the  power 
of  one  inspiration  to  conquer.  And  at  last 
they  stood  with  bowed  heads  while  the  Arch- 
bishop prayed,  and  their  voices  rose  as  the 
waves  of  the  sea  swelling  on  the  shore,  as 
with  his  they  blended  their  voices,  saying 
"  Our  Father "  ;  and  over  a  gathering  of  men 
and  women  such  as  no  Archbishop  ever  before 
him  blessed,    he    pronounced    the   benediction. 


188  IT  SHALL  BE  WON— 

And  they  went  forth  into  the  now  well-nigh 
silent  city  with  one  thought  in  their  hearts, 
that  now  the  world  was  to  be  won — because 
behind  the  great  campaign  there  was  the 
power  of  a  united  Church.  For  that  was  the 
dominating  impression,  that  beneath  all  out- 
ward differences,  all  who  name  the  name  of 
Christ  are  one  in  heart  and  spirit — one  in  a 
common  enthusiasm  for  the  cause  and  for  the 
glory  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  one  and  only  Lord. 
When  the  realisation  which  came  to  a  great 
assembly  that  night  shall  come  to  all  the 
Church  and  to  all  the  world,  the  day  of  vic- 
tory will  be  near.  There  are  verily  those 
to-day  on  earth  who  shall  not  taste  of  death 
till  they  see  the  kingdom  of  God  come  with 
power. 

2.  Prayer.  Unto  the  Church  God  has  com- 
mitted this  great  function — the  wielding  of 
the  spiritual  forces  throughout  the  world 
through  the  ministry  of  prayer.  It  is  won- 
derful to  think  how  it  has  been  committed  to 
Christians  to  unloose  the  spiritual  power  of 
God.  Far  in  the  West,  aspirations  and  prayers 
go  forth  into  the  Infinite,  and  these  fall  in 
reviving  showers   of  spiritual  influence  on  the 


NIL  DESPERANDUM  CHRISTO  DUCE    189 

parched  mission  -  fields  of  the  East.  And 
though  that  omnipotent  force  has  been  com- 
mitted to  the  Church,  yet  Christians  neglect 
it,  so  that  the  dew  falls  not  in  the  East 
because  it  is  not  generated  in  the  West.  One 
of  the  great  facts  which  came  home  to  the 
heart  at  the  World  Missionary  Conference 
was  the  central  power  and  paramount  import- 
ance of  prayer.  No  words  can  express  the 
solemnity  which  fell  on  the  crowded  assembly, 
when  every  day  silence  wrapped  it — silence 
broken  now  and  then  by  a  voice  vibrating  in 
a  cry  to  God.  One  such  hour  stands  forth 
pre-eminently.  When  the  great  Conference 
was  hushed  in  silence,  and  through  the  silence 
the  spirit  felt  the  present  Lord  touching  it, 
possessing  it,  then  suddenly,  through  the  still- 
ness, there  broke  the  voice  of  the  Lord. 
Across  nineteen  centuries  it  came,  from  ■  the 
central  glory  it  sounded,  and  hearing  that 
voice  the  soul  bowed  low  before  its  Lord. 
And  the  words  were  these :  "  For  their  sakes 
I  sanctify  Myself,  that  they  also  may  be 
sanctified  through  the  truth.  Neither  pray  I 
for  these  alone,  but  for  them  also  which 
shall  believe  on  Me  through  their  word;   that 


190  IT  SHALL  BE  WON— 

they  may  be  one  .  .  .  that  the  world  may 
believe  that  Thou  hast  sent  Me  .  .  .  that  they 
may  be  made  perfect  in  one  .  .  ."  Again  and 
again  the  voice  of  the  reader,  quivering  with 
emotion,  broke  the  silence,  and  again  and 
again  the  solemn  refrain,  "  That  they  may  be 
one  .  .  .  that  the  world  may  believe,"  came 
piercing  as  a  sword  to  the  heart.  And  now 
in  silence,  and  now  in  audible  broken  words, 
the  great  assembly  confessed  the  sins  of  the 
Church — the  pride,  the  arrogance,  the  self- 
glory,  the  earthly  passions,  which  broke  its 
unity  and  made  it  impossible  for  the  world  to 
believe.  Time  and  distance  are  blotted  out; 
the  Lord  and  His  Church  are  again  face  to 
face;  He  summons  His  own  to  look  at  Him 
and  His  desire  for  them,  and  to  look  at  them- 
selves and  at  what  they  have  done.  And  from 
a  bowed  multitude  there  rises  the  silent  cry 
of  awe,  "Lord  be  merciful  to  us  who  are 
sinners."  A  great  multitude  heard  again  the 
yearning  cry  of  their  Lord,  "That  they  may 
be  one,"  and  there  came  to  them  a  passionate 
yearning  for  the  day  when  they  can  realise  it 
in  its  fulness,  and  when  its  power  will  be 
manifested.      It    was    an    hour    in    which    the 


NIL  DESPERANDUM  CHRISTO  DUCE    191 

silence  was  filled  with  God;  an  hour  in  which 
the  soul  realised  the  power  of  prayer  to 
cleanse,  to  save,  to  restore  the  ideal  which 
passions  had  dimmed,  and  to  vivify  the 
whole  energies  by  bringing  them  again  into 
unison  with  the  will  of  Christ.  That  hour 
of  prayer  made  bitterness  and  strife  for  ever 
impossible  to  those  who  shared  it.  It  brought 
home  the  great  fact  that  only  through  prayer 
can  the  Church  abide  in  the  clear  consciousness 
of  the  will  of  Christ,  and  only  through  prayer 
wield  the  power  of  the  evangel.  It  was  on  a 
little  band  of  men  praying  together  that  the 
Spirit  descended  of  old,  establishing  the  Church, 
and  it  is  to-day  through  a  praying  Church  that 
the  Spirit  will  work  for  the  conquest  of  the 
world.  The  work  languisheth ;  the  Church  is 
feeble — because  the  Church  does  not  pray. 

3.  Consecration.  God  can  only  work  by 
instruments  fully  surrendered  to  His  will  and 
attuned  to  His  purpose.  That  there  may  be 
such  instruments  for  working  the  will  of  God, 
there  must  be  on  the  part  of  Christians  the 
full  surrender  of  the  life  to  God.  Only  the 
man  in  whom  and  through  whom  God  works 
can  do  the  work  of  God.     And  when  the  heart 


192  IT  SHALL  BE  WON— 

is  defiled,  and  the  purpose  divided,  and  the 
mind  not  single  ;  when  the  spirit  enthrones  self, 
saying,  "My  will  be  done,"  and  the  heart  en- 
thrones self,  saying,  "My  pleasure  be  done," 
then  it  is  manifest  that  through  such  a  man, 
the  will  of  God  cannot  work.  There  must  be 
an  absolute  surrender  of  the  whole  man  to  God 
ere  any  great  work  can  be  done  for  God.  The 
reed  is  a  poor,  feeble  instrument,  but  the  music 
of  the  spheres  can  breathe  through  it — then 
the  reed  is  glorious.  But  a  reed  stopped  by 
earth,  choked  by  mud,  will  be  for  ever  silent 
and  for  ever  inglorious.  It  is  only  when  the 
Spirit  of  God  fills  the  heart,  animates  the  pur- 
pose, strengthens  the  will,  cleanses  the  vision, 
that  the  music  of  heaven  can  become  audible 
through  any  man.  To  this  end  the  heart 
must  be  surrendered ;  the  bowed  soul  must  say  in 
the  garden,  "  Not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done." 
This  was  the  last  great  impression  which 
came,  when  Mr.  J.  R.  Mott  summoned  in  the 
name  of  God  the  last  and  greatest  of  all  the 
meetings  of  the  Conference  to  consecrate  them- 
selves to  an  unfinished  work — the  work  of 
winning  the  world.  "  It  is  a  dangerous  thing," 
said  he,    "  to    grow  into  a  knowledge  of   the 


NIL  DESPERANDUM  CHRISTO  DUCE    193 

needs  of  men,  to  be  swept  by  generous  emotion, 
if  that  knowledge  and  that  emotion  does  not 
issue  in  genuine  action."  The  great  Conference 
had  come  to  a  knowledge  of  the  world's  need 
as  never  before ;  it  had  been  swept  by  great 
and  generous  emotions — now  they  had  to  act. 
But  to  act  effectively,  they  must  consecrate 
themselves  fully  to  God,  separating  themselves 
for  ever  from  all  flabbiness  and  all  selfish- 
ness. 

Then  came  the  great  moment  of  a  great 
Conference.  Sudden  silence  filled  the  hall,  and 
in  the  silence,  in  the  very  presence  of  God,  a 
great  multitude  consecrated  themselves  anew 
to  the  unfinished  work.  All  of  a  sudden  the 
Unseen  became  the  only  reality  for  a  great 
assembly.  "That  night,"  wrote  Ebenezer 
Erskin  of  an  hour  of  great  experience,  "  that 
night  I  got  my  head  out  of  time  into  eternity." 
It  was  verily  so  that  night  also  for  a  great 
throng.  The  city  of  God  and  the  palaces 
thereof  glowed  and  gleamed — and  they  are 
never  afar.  And  from  subdued  souls  the  silent 
cry  arose,    "Not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done." 

Yes,  the  world  will  be  won  for  Christ.  The 
passion  which  can  throb  so  in  the  soul  cannot 

Won  for  Christ.  24 


194  IT  SHALL  BE  WON 

be  hindered.  The  cause  which  has  the  power 
of  God  thus  manifestly  behind  it  cannot  fail. 
The  day  of  triumph  is  breaking  over  all  the 
world.  Let  him  who  reads  join  in  the  prayer 
that  truth  and  righteousness  may  everywhere 
prevail : — 

Almighty  God,  our  heavenly  Father,  who 
through  Thine  only  begotten  Son,  Jesus  Christ 
our  Lord,  hast  revealed  to  us  the  riches  of  Thy 
love,  and  hast  raised  us  up  out  of  the  dust  to 
the  glorious  heritage  of  sons  of  God  and  heirs 
of  eternal  life,  help  us  now  so  that  we  may 
surrender  ourselves  to  Thy  will.  Sanctify  us 
by  Thy  Holy  Spirit,  so  that  when  the  voice  of 
our  Lord  calls  us,  He  may  not  call  in  vain. 
Suffer  us  not  to  be  rebellious  or  to  quench 
Thy  Holy  Spirit,  but  surrendering  ourselves  to 
our  high  calling,  may  we  give  to  a  perishing 
world  what  Thou  gavest  to  our  perishing  souls. 
Thy  fields,  O  Lord,  are  ripe  unto  the  harvest, 
and  in  our  hearts  Thy  voice  calleth,  and  with 
penitent  souls,  in  the  strength  of  Thy  Holy 
Spirit,  we  dedicate  ourselves  to  Thy  service. 
And  to  Thee,  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost, 
one  God,  shall  be  the  glory,  world  without 
end.    Amen. 


UN  WIN  BBOTHEES,  LIMITED 
WOKING  AND  LONDON 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Libraries 


1    1012  01234  3846 


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